IMMIGRATION AND
AMERICANIZATION
SELECTED READINGS
COMPILED AND EDITED BY
PHILIP DAVIS
LECTURER ON IMMIGRATION AND AMERICANIZATION
AT BOSTON UNIVERSITY
ASSISTED BY
BERTHA SCHWARTZ
GINN AND COMPANY
BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON
ATLANTA • DALLAS - COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO
, COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
PHILIP DAVIS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
320.1
Tgftc
G1NN AND COMPANY • PRO-
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A.
TO
MY WIFE
PREFACE
We are on the threshold of a new era in the history of immi-
gration in this country. The combined effects of the European
war and the new immigration law of 1917 will be so great as to
render much of our antebellum literature on immigration out of
tune with the new order. Hence the need of a representative
volume summarizing the best thought in past and current literature
on immigration and Americanization.
The book aims to cover the field of immigration and Amer-
icanization from every possible point of view, subject to the limits
of a single volume. It is particularly designed to meet the needs
of high schools, colleges, universities, and Chautauquas, which
have been frequently at a loss in recommending to the student,
investigator, official, or general public a handbook on these twin
topics.
This reference book is the outgrowth of several courses on
these subjects for teachers at Boston University and of similar
courses for workers with immigrants under the joint auspices of
the Old South Historical Association and the University Extension
Division of Massachusetts Board of Education. Much of the mate-
rial of the present volume was critically examined and tested by
the students in the light of definite standards of choice, primarily
with the idea of making available to the general reader and
special student alike the best that there is in the literature to date,
covering many centuries and countries and, therefore, necessarily
scattered and inaccessible.
These selections have been so arranged as to present not only a
chronological but a logical development of the subject matter, in-
cluding the most significant recent contributions to the all-important
problems of Americanization in terms of the broadest American
spirit. The volume should prove a useful handbook for similar
courses in immigration and Americanization which are growing
in number and variety in colleges and Chautauquas, as well as
vi IMMIGRATION AND AMERICANIZATION
among men's and women's clubs everywhere, and equally useful
for general or supplementary reading for thesis work, debates, or
general information about races and peoples, conditions and issues,
brought into special prominence by the World War.
As the volume goes to press, it becomes evident that our real
problem is not immigration per se, in spite of the fact that the
League of Nations Treaty may precipitate many international
problems on this issue, but the Americanization of the millions of
immigrants in our midst, to the end that the United States may
also represent a united people.
" Many People, One Nation " is the watchword of the Amer-
icanization movement, and many of the distinguished men and
women who generously contribute to the volume are themselves
important factors in the movement. To all contributors and their
publishers the editor desires to make grateful acknowledgment.
PHILIP DAVIS
PHEASANT HILL,
WEST MEDFORD, MASSACHUSETTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The editor is indebted to all authors listed in the table of
contents for generous permission to use selections from copy-
righted works and other publications. Grateful acknowledgment
is also made to the following publishers : The Macmillan Com-
pany, the Century Company, Funk and Wagnalls Company,
Henry Holt and Company, Little, Brown and Company, G. P.
Putnam's Sons, the Fleming H. Revell Company, and George
Routledge and Sons; to the publishers of the American Eco-
nomic Review, the American Hebrew, the Educational Review, the
Immigrants in America Review, the Journal of Sociology, the
Popular Science Monthly, the Quarterly Journal of Economics,
the Scientific Monthly, and the Survey; and also to the American
Sociological Society, the Committee for Immigrants in America,
the Knights of Columbus, the National Conference of Charities
and Correction, and the American Federation of Labor.
vii
CONTENTS
BOOK I. IMMIGRATION
INTRODUCTION
PAGE
Immigration : A Field Neglected by the Scholar, by Jane Addams, LL. D.,
Hull House, Chicago 3
I. HISTORY
Colonization and Immigration, by Edward Everett 23
Immigration — A Review, by Henry Cabot Lodge, LL.D 50
X" History of Immigration, by Prescott F. Hall, LL. B., Secretary, Immi-
gration Restriction League, Boston 61
II. CAUSES
Causes of Emigration. United States Immigration Commission ... 69
III. CHARACTERISTICS
A. EMIGRATION FROM NORTHWESTERN EUROPE
Emigration from the United Kingdom, by Stanley C. Johnson ... 95
German Immigration, by Gustavus Ohlinger 125
B. EMIGRATION FROM SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE
Jewish Immigration to the United States, by Samuel Joseph, Ph.D.,
Commercial High School, Brooklyn 136
The Coming of the Italian, by John Foster Carr, Director, Immigrant
Publication Society, New York 141
The Newer Slavic Immigration, by Emily Greene Balch, formerly Pro-
fessor of Political and Social Science, Wellesley College . . . . 155
C. EMIGRATION FROM ASIA
Japanese Immigration, by H. A. Millis, Professor of Economics, Uni-
versity of Kansas 1 70
Chinese Immigration. United States Immigration Commission . . . 190
Chinese Immigration, by Kee Owyang, Former Consul at San Francisco 200
x IMMIGRATION AND AMERICANIZATION
PAGE
IV. THE NEW IMMIGRATION
A Twenty-five Years' with the New Immigrant, by Edward A. Steiner,
* Professor of Applied Christianity, Grinnell College 204
Immigrants in Cities, by E. A. Goldenweiser, United States Immigration
Commission 216
The Immigrant Woman, by Kate Waller Barrett, M. D., Special Agent,
United States Immigration Commission 224
V. EFFECTS '
d Effects of Immigration, by Leon Marshall, Professor of Political
Economy, University of Chicago 231
Economic : Immigration and the Minimum Wage, by Paul U. Kellogg,
A. M., Editor of The Survey 242
Economic : Immigration and the Living Wage, by John Mitchell . . 255
Economic : Immigration and Crises, by Henry Pratt Fairchild, Professor
of the Science of Society, Yale University ......... 264
ial Problems of Recent Immigration, by Jeremiah W. Jenks, LL. D.,
and W. Jett Lauck, of the United States Immigration Commission 276
Immigration and Health, by Alfred C. Reed, M. D., United States
Public Health and Marine Hospital Service 299
Immigration and Crime, by Isaac A. Hourwich, Ph. D 309
Political Consequences of Immigration, by Edward Alsworth Ross, Pro-
fessor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin 319
,
\
v VI. IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
Federal Immigration Legislation. United States Immigration Commission 326
Restriction of Immigration, by General Francis A. Walker .... 360
The Selection of Immigrants, by Edward T. Devine, LL. D., Director,
New York School of Philanthropy ........... 373
The Literacy Test : Three Historic Vetoes, by Grover Cleveland, William
H. Taft, and Woodrow Wilson ............ 376
The Immigration Law of 1917 .............. 381
Future Human Migrations, by F. J. Haskin ......... 420
CONTENTS xi
PAGE
BOOK II. AMERICANIZATION
VII. AMERICANIZATION: POLICIES AND PROGRAMS
Americans and our Policies, by Lillian D. Wald 427
The Immigrant and the State
A. The work of the California Commission of Immigration and
Housing 440
B. The work of the Massachusetts Bureau of Immigration .... 474
. . VIII. DISTRIBUTION
Immigration and Distribution, by J. E. Milholland, Publicist .... 497
Distribution of Agricultural Immigrants, from The Survey 502
Distribution of Immigrants in the United States, by Walter F. Willcox,
Professor of Economics and Statistics, Cornell University . . . 505
Schemes to " Distribute " Immigrants, by Samuel Gompers, President,
American Federation of Labor 52^
Governmental Distribution of Immigrants. United States Bureau of
Immigration 549
IX. EDUCATION
^The Education of Immigrants, by H. H. Wheaton, Specialist in Immi-
grant Education 567
X Schooling of the Immigrant, by Frank V. Thompson, Superintendent,
Boston Public Schools 582
X. NATURALIZATION AND CITIZENSHIP
The Naturalization of Foreigners, by R. E. Cole, Counsel on Naturaliza-
tion for Committee for Immigrants in America 600
The International College for Immigrants, by Henry M. Bowden, Pro-
fessor of English, American International College for Immigrants,
Springfield, Massachusetts 607
XI. AMERICANISM
Address at Convention Hall, Philadelphia, May 10, 1915, by Woodrow
Wilson 611
What America Means, by the Honorable Franklin K. Lane, Secretary
of the Interior 615
xii IMMIGRATION AND AMERICANIZATION
PAGE
Americanization, by P. P. Claxton, Commissioner of Education . . . 621
What is Americanization ? by Frances A. Kellor, LL. B. . . ' . . . 623
True Americanism, by Louis D. Brandeis, Justice of Supreme Court . 639
Americanism, by Theodore Roosevelt 645
What America Means to the Immigrant, by Philip Davis, Lecturer on
Immigration and Americanization, Boston University 66 1
APPENDIX
National Americanization Conference 702
Americanization, by Richard K. Campbell, United States Commissioner
of Naturalization 673
Human Documents: Polish Peasant Letters 741
BIBLIOGRAPHY 749
INDEX 767
IMMIGRATION AND AMERICANIZATION
BOOK I. IMMIGRATION
f INTRODUCTION
IMMIGRATION : A FIELD NEGLECTED BY THE
SCHOLAR \
JANE ADDAMS, LL.D.
IT IS, perhaps, well to rid myself at once of some of the impli-
cations of this rather overwhelming title by stating that it
is not the purpose of this short address to enter into a discussion
concerning the restriction or non-restriction of immigration,
not to attempt to analyze those astounding figures annually
published from Ellis Island; neither do I wish to charge the
scholar with having neglected to collect information as to the
extent and growth of immigration in the United States, nor in
failing to furnish statistical material as fully perhaps as the
shifting character of the subject permits. Such formal studies
as we have on the annual colonies of immigrants in American
cities, and of the effect of immigration in districts similar to the
anthracite coal regions, have been furnished by university men ;
indeed, almost the only accurate study into the nationalities
and locations of the immigrants in Chicago has been made by a
member of this University.
But in confining the subject to a scrutiny of the oft-repeated
statement that we as a nation are rapidly reaching the limit of
our powers of assimilation, that we receive further masses of
immigrants at the risk of blurring those traits and characteristics
which we are pleased to call American, with its corollary that
the national standard of living is in danger of permanent debase-
ment, a certain further demand may legitimately be made upon
the scholar. I hope to be able to sustain the contention that
such danger as exists arises from intellectual dearth and apathy ;
that we are testing our national life by a tradition too provincial
1 Convocation Address at the University of Chicago. Printed in The Commons,
Vol. X., No. i, January, 1905.
4 INTRODUCTION
and limited to meet its present motley and cosmopolitan char-
acter ; that we lack mental energy, adequate knowledge, and a
sense of the youth of the earth.
IDEALS NOT IN ACCORD WITH EXPERIENCE
The constant cry that American institutions are in danger
betrays a spiritual waste, not due to our infidelity to national
ideals, but arising from the fact that we fail to enlarge those
ideals in accord with our faithful experience of life ; and that
our political machinery, devised for quite other conditions, has
not been readjusted and adapted to the successive changes
resulting from our industrial development. The clamor for the
town meeting, for the colonial and early-century ideals of gov-
ernment is in itself significant, for we know out of our personal
experience that we quote the convictions and achievements of
the past as an excuse for our inaction in moments when the
current of life runs low ; that one of the dangers of life, one of
its veritable moral pits, consists in the temptation to remain
constant to a truth when we no longer wholly believe it, when
its implications are not justified by our latest information. If
the immigration situation contains the elements of an intellectual
crisis, then to let the scholar off with the mere collecting of
knowledge, or yet with its transmission, or indeed to call his
account closed with that still higher function of research, would
be to throw away one of our most valuable assets.
THEORY UNDER THE FACT OF MIGRATION
In a sense the enormous and unprecedented moving about over
the face of the earth on the part of all nations is in itself the
result of philosophic dogma, of the creed of individual liberty.
The modern system of industry and commerce presupposes
freedom of occupation, of travel and residence; even more, it
unhappily rests in a large measure upon the assumption of a
body of the unemployed and the unskilled, ready to be absorbed
or dropped according to the demands of production ; but back
of that, or certainly preceding its later developments, lies "the
natural right" doctrine of the eighteenth century. Even so
IMMIGRATION 5
late as 1892, an official treaty of the United States referred to
the " inalienable right of man to change his residence and reli-
gion." This dogma of the schoolmen, dramatized in France
and penetrating under a thousand forms into the most backward
European states, is still operating as an obscure force in sending
emigrants to America, and in our receiving them here. But in
the second century of its existence it has become too barren and
chilly to induce any really zealous or beneficent activity on
behalf of the immigrants after they arrive, and those things
which we do believe — such convictions as we have, and which
might be formulated to the immeasurable benefit of the immi-
grants, and to the everlasting good of our national life — have
not yet been apprehended by the scholar in relation to this
field. They have furnished us with no method by which to dis-
cover men, to spiritualize, to understand, to hold intercourse
with aliens and to receive of what they bring.
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY DOGMA VERSUS EXPERIENCE OF
THE NINETEENTH
A century-old abstraction breaks down before this vigorous
test of concrete cases, the Italian lazzaroni, the peasants from
the Carpathian foothills, and the proscribed traders from Galatia.
We have no national ideality founded upon realism and tested
by our growing experience, but only the platitudes of our crudest
youth with which to meet the situation. The philosophers and
statesmen of the eighteenth century believed that the universal
franchise would cure all ills ; that fraternity and equality rested
only upon constitutional rights and privileges. The first polit-
ical document of America opens with this philosophy and upon
it the founders of a new state ventured their fortunes. We still
keep to this formalization because the philosophers of this gen-
eration give us nothing newer, ignoring the fact that the world-
wide problems are no longer abstractly political, but politico-
industrial. If we could frankly face the proposition that the
whole situation is more industrial than political, then we would
realize that the officers of the government who are dealing with
naturalization papers and testing the knowledge of the immi-
grants concerning the constitution of the United States are only
6 INTRODUCTION
playing with counters representing the beliefs of a century ago,
while the real issues are being settled by the great industrial
and commercial interests which are at once the product and the
masters of our contemporary life. As children who are allowed
to amuse themselves with poker chips pay no attention to the
real game which their elders play with the genuine cards in their
hands, so we shut our eyes to the exploitation and industrial
debasement of the immigrant, and say with placid contentment
that he has been given the rights of an American citizen, and
that, therefore, all our obligations have been fulfilled. It is as
if we should undertake to cure our current political corruption
which is founded upon a disregard of the interstate commerce
acts by requiring the recreant citizens to repeat the constitution
of the United States.
NATURALIZATION: OLD LAWS, NEW NEEDS
As yet no vigorous effort is made to discover how far our
present system of naturalization, largely resting upon laws
enacted in 1802, is inadequate, although it may have met the
requirements of "the fathers." These processes were devised
to test new citizens who had emigrated to the United States
from political rather than from economic pressure, although
these two have always been in a certain sense coextensive. Yet
the early Irish came to America to seek an opportunity for self-
government denied them at home, the Germans and Italians
started to come in largest numbers after the absorption of their
smaller states into the larger nations, and the immigrants from
Russia are the conquered Poles, Lithuanians, Finns, and Jews.
On some such obscure notion the processes of naturalization
were worked out, and with a certain degree of logic these first
immigrants were presented with the constitution of the United
States as a type and epitome of that which they had come to
seek. So far as they now come in search of political liberty,
as many of them do every day, the test is still valid ; but in the
meantime we cannot ignore those significant figures .which show
emigration to rise with periods of depression in given countries,
and immigration to be checked by periods of depression in
America, and we refuse to see how largely the question has
IMMIGRATION 7
become an economic one. At the present moment, as we know,
the actual importing of immigrants is left largely to the energy of
steamship companies and to those agents for contract labor who
are keen enough to avoid the restrictive laws. The business man
here is again in the saddle as he is so largely in American affairs.
EXPLOITATION OF IMMIGRANTS
From the time that they first ma"ke the acquaintance of the
steamship agent in their own villages, at least until a grandchild
is born on the new soil, the immigrants are subjected to various
processes of exploitation from purely commercial and self-seeking
interests. It begins with the representatives of the trans-Atlantic
lines and their allies, who convert the peasant holdings into
money and provide the prospective emigrants with needless
supplies. The brokers in manufactured passports send their
clients by successive stages for a thousand miles to a port suit-
ing their purposes. On the way the emigrants' eyes are treated
that they may pass the physical test, they are taught to read
sufficiently well to meet the literacy test, they are lent enough
money to escape the pauper test, and by the time they have
reached America, they are sp hopelessly in debt that it takes
them months to work out all they have received, during which
time they are completely under the control of the last broker in
the line, who has his dingy office in an American city. The
exploitation continues under the employment agency whose
operations merge into those of the politician, through the natu-
ralization henchman, the petty lawyers who foment their quarrels
and grievances by the statement that in a free country every-
body "goes to law," by the liquor dealers who stimulate a lively
trade among them ; and finally by the lodging-house keepers and
the landlords who are not obliged to give them the housing which
the American tenant demands. It is a long, dreary road and the
immigrant is successfully exploited at every turn. At moments
one looking on is driven to quote the Titanic plaint of Walt
Whitman :
As I stand aloof and look there is to me something profoundly
affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those who do
not believe in men.
8 INTRODUCTION
BROKERAGE IN CITIZENSHIP
The sinister aspect of this exploitation lies in the fact that it
is carried on by agents whose stock in trade are the counters
and terms of citizenship. It is said that at the present moment
there are more of these agents in Palermo than perhaps in any
other European port, and that those politicians who have found
it impossible to stay even in that corrupt city are engaged in
the brokerage of naturalization papers in the United States, that
certainly one effect of the stringent contract-labor laws has been
to make the padrones more powerful because "smuggled alien
labor" has become more valuable to American corporations,
and also to make simpler the delivery of commercial interests.
It becomes a veritable system of poisoning the notions of decent
government because the entire process is carried on in political
terms, our childish red, white, and blue poker chips again !
More elaborate avoidance of restrictive legislation quickly
adapts itself to changes either in legislation here or at the points
of departure ; for instance, a new type of broker in Russia at
the present moment is making use of the war in the interests
of young Russian Jews. If one of these men should leave the
country ordinarily, his family would be obliged to pay three
hundred rubles to the government, but if he first joins the army
his family is free from this obligation for he has passed into the
keeping of his sergeant. Out of four hundred Russian Jews who
three months ago were drafted into the army at a given recruit-
ing station, only ten reported, the rest having escaped through
immigration. Of course the entire undertaking is much more
hazardous because the man is a deserter from the army in addi-
tion to his other disabilities, but the brokers merely put up the
price of their services and continue their undertakings. Do we
ignore the one million false naturalization papers in the United
States issued and concealed by commercialized politics, in the
interests of our uneasy knowledge that commercial and govern-
mental powers are curiously allied, although we profess that the
latter has no connection with the former and no control over it ?
The man who really knows immigrants and undertakes to
naturalize them makes no pretense of the lack of connection
between the two. The petty and often corrupt politician who
IMMIGRATION 9
is first kind to them realizes perfectly well that the force pushing
them here has been industrial' need and that its recognition is
legitimate. He follows the natural course of events when he
promises to get the immigrant "a job," for that is certainly what
he most needs in all the world. If the politician nearest to him
were really interested in the immigrant and should work out a
scheme of naturalization fitted to the situation, he would go on
from the street-cleaning and sewer-digging in which the immi-
grant first engages to an understanding of the relation of those
simple offices to city government, to the obligation of his alder-
man to secure cleanliness for the streets in which his children
play and for the tenement in which he lives. The notion of
representative government should be made quite clear and con-
crete to him. He could demand his rights and use his vote in
order to secure them. His very naive demands might easily
become a restraint, a purifying check upon the alderman, instead
of a source of constant corruption and exploitation. But when
the politician attempts to naturalize the bewildered immigrant,
he must perforce accept the doctrinaire standard imposed by
men who held a theory totally unattached to experience, and he
must therefore begin with the remote constitution of the United
States. At the Cook County Courthouse only a few weeks ago,
a candidate for naturalization who was asked the usual question
as to what the constitution of the United States was replied:
"The Illinois Central." His mind naturally turned to his work,
to the one bit of contribution he had genuinely made to the new
country, and his reply might well offer a valuable suggestion
to the student of educational method. The School of Education
of this University makes industrial construction and evolution
a natural basis for all future acquisition of knowledge and claims
that anything less vital and creative is inadequate.
NATURAL OPENINGS INTO CIVIC LIFE
It is surprising how a simple experience, if it be but genuine,
affords an opening into citizenship altogether lacking to the more
grandiose attempts. A Greek-American who slaughters sheep
in a tenement-house yard on the basis of the Homeric tradition
can be made to see the effect of the improvised shambles on his
io INTRODUCTION
neighbors' health and the right of the city to prohibit him only
as he perceives the development of city government upon its
most modern basis.
The enforcement of adequate child-labor laws offers unending
opportunity for better citizenship, founded not upon theory
but on action. An Italian or Bohemian parent who has worked
in the fields from babyhood finds it difficult to understand that
the long and monotonous work in factories in which his child
engages is much more exigent than the intermittent outdoor
labor required from him; that the need for education for his
child is a matter of vital importance to his adopted city, which
has enacted definite, well-considered legislation in regard to it.
Some of the most enthusiastic supporters of child-labor legis-
lation and compulsory education laws are those parents who
sacrifice old-world tradition as well as the much needed earnings
of their young children because of loyalty to the laws of their
adopted country. Certainly genuine sacrifice for the nation's
law is a good foundation for patriotism, and as this again is not
a doctrinaire question, women are not debarred, and mothers
who wash and scrub for the meager support of their children
say sturdily sometimes, "It will be a year before he can go to
work without breaking the law, but we came to this country
to give the young ones a change and we are not going to begin
by having them do what's not right."
Upon some such basis as this the Hebrew Alliance and the
Charity Organization Society of New York, which are putting
forth desperate energy in the enormous task of ministering to
the suffering that immigration entails, are developing under-
standing and respect for the alien through their mutual efforts
to secure more adequate tenement-house regulation, and to
control the spread of tuberculosis, both of these undertakings
being perfectly hopeless without the intelligent cooperation of
the immigrants themselves. Through such humble doors as
these perchance the immigrant may enter into his heritage in
a new nation. Democratic government has always been the
result of spiritual travail and moral effort; apparently even
here the immigrant must pay the cost.
IMMIGRATION n
HOW PATRIOTISM MAY NOT BE TAUGHT
As we fail to begin with his experience in the induction of the
adult immigrant into practical citizenship, so we assume in our
formal attempts to teach patriotism that experience and tradi-
tions have no value, and that a new sentiment must be put into
aliens by some external process. Some years ago a public-spirited
organization engaged a number of speakers to go to the various
city schools in order to instruct the children in the significance
of Decoration Day and to foster patriotism among the foreign-
born by descriptions of the Civil War. In one of the schools
filled with Italian children, an old soldier, a veteran in years and
experience, gave a description of a battle in Tennessee, and his
personal adventures in using a pile of brush as an ambuscade
and a fortification. Coming from the schoolhouse an eager
young Italian broke out with characteristic vividness into a
description of his father's campaigning under the leadership of
Garibaldi, possibly from some obscure notion that that too was a
civil .war fought from principle, but more likely because the
description of one battle had roused in his mind the memory of
another such description. The lecturer, whose sympathies
happened to be on the other side of the Garibaldian conflict,
somewhat sharply told him that he must forget all that, that
he was no longer an Italian, but an American. The natural
growth of patriotism upon respect for the achievements of one's
fathers, the bringing together of the past with the present, the
pointing out of the almost world-wide effort at a higher standard
of political freedom which swept over all Europe and America
between 1848 and 1872 could, of course, have no place in the
boy's mind, because it had none in the mind of the instructor,
whose patriotism apparently tried to purify itself by the American
process of elimination.
OLD GRAFTS ON THE NEW STOCK
How far a certain cosmopolitan humanitarianism ignoring
national differences is either possible or desirable, it is difficult
to state, but certain it is that the old type of patriotism founded
upon a common national history and land occupation becomes
I2 INTRODUCTION
to many of the immigrants who bring it with them a veritable
stumbling block and impedimenta. Many Greeks whom I
know are fairly besotted with a consciousness of their national
importance, and the achievements of their glorious past. Among
them the usual effort to found a new patriotism upon American
history is often an absurd undertaking; for instance, on the
night of last Thanksgiving I spent some time and zeal in a descrip-
tion of the Pilgrim Fathers, the motives which had driven them
across the sea, while the experiences of the Plymouth colony
were illustrated by stereopticon slides and little dramatic scenes.
The audience of Greeks listened respectfully, although I was
uneasily conscious of the somewhat feeble attempt to boast of
Anglo-Saxon achievement in hardihood and privation to men
whose powers of admiration were absorbed in their Greek back-
ground of philosophy and beauty. At any rate after the lecture
was over one of the Greeks said to me quite simply, "I wish I
could describe my ancestors to you; they were different from
yours." His further remarks were translated by a little Irish
boy of eleven who speaks modern Greek with facility and turns
many an honest penny by translating, into the somewhat pert
statement: "He says if that is what your ancestors are like,
that his could beat them out." It is a good illustration of our
faculty for ignoring the past, and of our failure to understand the
immigrant estimation of ourselves. This lack of a more cosmo-
politan standard, of a consciousness of kind founded upon creative
imagination and historic knowledge, is apparent in many direc-
tions, and cruelly widens the gulf between immigrant fathers
and children who are "Americans in process."
A hideous story comes from New York of a young Russian
Jewess who was employed as a stenographer in a down-town
office, where she became engaged to be married to a young man
of Jewish-American parentage. She felt keenly the difference
between him and her newly immigrated parents, and on the night
when he was to be presented to them she went home early to
make every possible preparation for his coming. Her efforts
to make the menage presentable were so discouraging, the whole
situation filled her with such chagrin, that an hour before his
expected arrival she ended her own life. Although the father
IMMIGRATION 13
was a Talmud scholar of standing in his native Russian town,
and the lover was a clerk of very superficial attainment, she
possessed no standard by which to judge the two men. This
lack of standard can be charged to the entire community, for
why should we expect an untrained girl to be able to do for her-
self what the community so pitifully fails to accomplish ?
TO HUMANIZE THE NEW SCHOLARSHIP
As scholarship in the first half of the nineteenth century saved ^
literature from a futile romanticism and transformed its entire
method by the perception that "the human is not of necessity
the cultivated ; the human is the wide-spread, the ancient in
speech or in behavior, it is the deep, the emotional, the thing
much loved by many men, the poetical, the organic, the vital,
in civilization," so I would ask the scholarship of this dawning
century to save its contemporaries from materialism by revealing
to us the inherent charm and resource of the humblest men.
Equipped as it is with the training and the " unspecialized cell"
of evolutionary science, this ought not to prove an undesirable
task. The scholar has already pointed out to us the sweetness
and charm which inhere in primitive domestic customs and shows
us the curious pivot they make for religious and tribal beliefs
until the simple action of women grinding millet or corn becomes
almost overladen with penetrating reminiscence, sweeter than
the chant they sing. Something of the same quality may be
found among many of the immigrants ; when one stumbles upon
an old Italian peasant with her distaff against her withered face
and her pathetic old hands patiently holding the thread, as has
been done by myriads of women since children needed to be clad ;
or an old German potter, misshapen by years, but his sensitive
hands fairly alive with the artist's prerogative of direct creation,
one wishes that the scholar might be induced to go man hunting
into these curious human groups called newly arrived immigrants !
Could he take these primitive habits as they are to be found
in American cities every day, and give them their significance
and place, they would be a wonderful factor for poesy in cities
frankly given over to industrialism, and candidly refusing to read
poetry which has no connection with its aims and activities. As a
I4 INTRODUCTION
McAndrews' hymn may express the frantic rush of the industrial
river, so these could give us some thing of the mysticism and charm
of the industrial springs, a suggestion of source, a touch of the
refinement which adheres to simple things. This study of origins,
of survivals, of paths of least resistance refining an industrial
age through the people and experiences which really belong to
it and do not need to be brought in from the outside, surely affords
an opening for scholarship.
IMMIGRANT LIFE LARGER THAN OUR LOGIC
The present lack of understanding, the dearth of the illumina-
tion which knowledge gives can be traced not only in the social
and political maladjustment of the immigrant, but is felt in
so-called " practical affairs" of national magnitude. Regret is
many times expressed that, notwithstanding the fact that nine
out of every ten immigrants are of rural birth, they all tend to
congregate in cities where their inherited and elaborate knowl-
edge of agricultural processes is unutilized, although they are
fitted to undertake the painstaking method which American farm-
ers despise. But it is characteristic of American complacency
that when any assisted removal to agricultural regions is con-
templated, we utterly ignore their past experiences and always
assume that each family will be content to live in the middle of
its own piece of ground, although there are few peoples on the
face of the earth who have ever tried isolating a family on a
hundred and sixty acres or eighty, or even on forty, but this is
the American way, a survival of our pioneer days, and we refuse
to modify it, notwithstanding the fact that the South Italians
from the day of medieval incursions have lived in compact
villages with an intense and elaborate social life, so much of it
out-of-doors and interdependent that it has affected almost
every domestic habit. Italian women knead their own bread
but depend on the village oven for its baking, and the men would
rather walk for miles to their fields each day than to face an
evening of companionship limited to the family. Nothing
could afford a better check to the constant removal to the cities
of the farming population all over the United States than to be
able to combine community life with agricultural occupation,
IMMIGRATION 15
affording that development of civilization which curiously enough
density alone brings and for which even a free system of rural
delivery is not an adequate substitute. Much of the significance
and charm of rural life in South Italy lies in its village compan-
ionship quite as the dreariness of the American farm life inheres
in its unnecessary solitude. But we totally disregard the solu-
tion which the old agricultural community offers, and our utter
lack of adaptability has something to do with the fact that the
South Italian remains in the city where he soon forgets his cunning
in regard to silk worms and olive trees, but continues his old
social habits to the extent of filling an entire tenement house
with the people from one village.
LAND TENURE, OLDEST AND NEWEST
We also exhibit all the Anglo-Saxon distrust of any experi-
ment with land tenure or method of taxation, although the single
tax advocates in our midst do not fail to tell us daily of the
stupidity of the present arrangement, and it might be well to
make a few experiments upon a historic basis before their enthusi-
asm converts us all. The Slavic village, the mir system of land
occupation, has been in successful operation for centuries in
Russia, training men within its narrow limits to community
administration; and yet when a persecuted sect from Russia
wishes to find refuge in America — and naturally seven thousand
people cannot give up all at once even if it were desirable a system
of land ownership in which they are expert and which is singu-
larly like that in Palestine during its period of highest prosperity
— we cannot receive them in the United States because our
laws have no way of dealing with such a case. And in Canada,
where they are finally settled, the unimaginative Dominion
officials are driven to the verge of distraction concerning regis-
tration of deeds and the collection of taxes from men who do
not claim acres in their own names but in the name of the vil-
lage. The official distraction is reflected and intensified among
the people themselves to the point of driving them into the
medieval "marching mania," in the hope of finding a land in
the south where they may carry out their inoffensive mir
system. The entire situation might prove that an unbending
»
16 INTRODUCTION
theory of individualism may become as fixed as status itself.
There are certainly other factors in the Doukhobor situation
of religious bigotry and of the self-seeking of leadership, but in
spite of the fact that the Canadian officials have in other matters
exhibited much of the adaptability which distinguishes the
British colonial policy, they are completely stranded on the rock
of Anglo-Saxon individualistic ownership, and assume that any
other system of land tenure is subversive of government, although
Russia manages to exert a fair amount of governmental control
over thousands of acres held under the system which they detest.
THE SALON OF THE GHETTO
In our eagerness to reproach the immigrant for not going upon
the land, we almost overlook the contributions to city life which
those of them who were adapted to it in Europe are making to our
cities here. From dingy little eating houses in lower New York,
performing a function somewhat between the eighteenth century
coffeehouse and the Parisian cafe, is issuing at the present
moment perhaps the sturdiest realistic drama that is being pro-
duced on American soil. Late into the night speculation is
carried forward not on the nice questions of the Talmud and
quibbles of logic, but minds long trained on these seriously dis-
cuss the need of a readjustment of the industrial machine that
the primitive sense of justice and righteousness may secure
larger play in our social organization. And yet a Russian in
Chicago who used to believe that Americans cared first and fore-
most for political liberty and would certainly admire those who
had suffered in its cause finds no one interested in his story of
six years' banishment beyond the Antarctic circle, and is really
listened to only when he tells to a sportsman the tale of the
fish he caught during the six weeks of summer when the rivers
were open. " Lively work then, but plenty of time to eat them
dried and frozen through the rest of the year," is the most sym-
pathetic comment he has yet received upon an experience
which at least to him held the bitter-sweet of martyrdom.
IMMIGRATION 17
SPIRITUALIZING OUR MATERIALISM
Among the colonies of the most recently immigrated Jews
who still carry out their orthodox customs and a ritual preserved
through centuries in the Ghetto, one constantly feels during a
season of religious observance a refreshing insistence upon the
reality of the inner life, and the dignity of its expression in in-
herited form. Perhaps the most striking approach to the ma-
terialism of Chicago is the sight of a Chicago River bridge lined
with men and women on one day in the year oblivious of the
noisy traffic and sordid surroundings, casting their sins upon
the waters that they may be carried far from them. That
obsession which the materialism of Chicago sometimes makes
upon one's brain so that one is almost driven to go out upon
the street fairly shouting that after all life does not consist in
wealth, in learning, in enterprise, in energy, in success, not even
in that modern fetish culture, but upon an inner equilibrium,
"the agreement of soul," is here for once plainly stated, and is
a relief even in its exaggeration and grotesqueness.
The charge that recent immigration threatens to debase the
American standard of living is certainly a grave one, but I
would invite the scholar even into that sterner region which we
are accustomed to regard as purely industrial. At first glance
nothing seems further from an intellectual proposition than this
question of tin cups and plates stored in a bunk versus a white
cloth and a cottage table, and yet, curiously enough, an English
writer has recently cited "standards of life" as an illustration
of the fact that it is ideas which mold the lives of men, and states
that around the deeply significant idea of the standard of life
center our industrial problems of to-day, and that this idea forms
the base of all the forward movements of the working class.
The significance of the standard of life lies, not so much in the
fact that for each of us it is different, but that for all of us it is
progressive, constantly invading new realms. To imagine that
all goes well if sewing machines and cottage organs reach the
first generation of immigrants, fashionable dressmakers and
pianos the second, is of course the most untutored interpretation
of it. And yet it is a question of food and shelter, and further
of the maintenance of industrial efficiency and of life itself to
i8 INTRODUCTION
thousands of men, and this gigantic task of standardizing suc-
cessive nations of immigrants falls upon workmen who lose all
if they fail.
POLITICAL NATURE OF THE INDUSTRIAL SITUATION
Curiously enough, however, as soon as the immigrant situa-
tion is frankly regarded as an industrial one, the really political
nature of the essentially industrial situation is revealed in the
fact that trade organizations which openly concern themselves
with the immigration problem on its industrial side quickly
take on the paraphernalia and machinery which have hitherto
associated themselves with governmental life and control. The
trades-unions have worked out all over again local autonomy
with central councils and national representative bodies and the
use of the referendum vote. They also exhibit many features
of political corruption and manipulation but they still contain
the purifying power of reality, for the trades-unions are engaged
in a desperate struggle to maintain a standard wage against the
constant arrival of unskilled immigrants at the rate of three
quarters of a million a year, at the very period when the elabora-
tion of machinery permits the largest use of unskilled men.
The first real lesson in self-government to many immigrants
has come through the organization of labor unions, and it could
come in no other way, for the union alone has appealed to their
necessities. And out of these primal necessities one sees the
first indication of an idealism of which one at moments dares
to hope that it may be sturdy enough and sufficiently founded
upon experience to make some impression upon the tremendous
immigration situation.
SUBSTITUTION OF RACES AT STOCKYARDS
'To illustrate from the Stockyards strike of last summer, may
I quote from a study made from the University of Wisconsin -
and mindful of my audience all I say of trades-unions shall be
quoted from Ph.D.'s :
Perhaps the fact of greatest social significance is that the strike
of 1904 was not merely a strike of skilled labor for the unskilled, but
IMMIGRATION 19
was a strike of Americanized Irish, Germans, and Bohemians in behalf
of Slovaks, Poles, and Lithuanians. . . . This substitution of races
in the Stockyards has been a continuing process for twenty years.
The older nationalities have already disappeared from the unskilled
occupations and the substitution has evidently run along the line of
lower standard of living. The latest arrivals, the Lithuanians and
Slovaks, are probably the most oppressed of the peasants of Europe.
Those who attended the crowded meetings of last summer
and heard the same address successively translated by inter-
preters into six or eight languages, who saw the respect shown
to the most uncouth of the speakers by the skilled American
men who represented a distinctly superior standard of life and
thought, could never doubt the power of the labor organizations
for amalgamation, whatever opinion they might hold concern-
*ing their other values. This may be said in spite of the fact
that great industrial disturbances have arisen from the under-
cutting of- wages by the lowering of racial standard. Certainly
the most notable of these have taken place in these industries
and at those places in. which the importation of immigrants
has been deliberately fostered as a wage-lowering weapon, and
even in those disturbances and under the shock and strain of a
long strike disintegration did not come along the line of race
cleavage.
HOW UNIONS BLEND THE RACES
It may further, be contended that this remarkable coming
together has been the result of economic pressure and is with-
out merit or idealism, that the trades-union record on Chinese
exclusion and negro discrimination has been damaging, and
yet I would quote from a study of the anthracite coal fields
made from the University of Pennsylvania :
The United Mine Workers of America is taking men of a score of
nationalities — English-speaking and Slavmen of widely different
creeds, languages, and customs, and of varying powers of industrial
competition, and is welding them into an industrial brotherhood,
each part of which can at least understand of the others that they are
working for one great and common end. This bond of unionism is
stronger than one can readily imagine who has not seen its mysterious
workings or who has not been a victim of its members' newly found
20 INTRODUCTION
enthusiasm. It is to-day the strongest tie that can bind together
147,000 mine workers and the thousands dependent upon them. It
is more than religion, more than the social ties which hold together
members of the same community.
This is from a careful study by Mr. Warne, which doubt-
less many of you know, called " The Slav Invasion."
HUMAN PROBLEMS OF THE STRIKE COMMISSION
It was during a remarkable struggle on the part of this amal-
gamation of men from all countries, that the United States
government in spite of itself was driven to take a hand in an
industrial situation, owing to the long strain and the intolerable
suffering entailed upon the whole country, but even then public
opinion was too aroused, too moralized to be patient with an
investigation of the mere commercial questions of tonnage and
freight rates with their political implications, and insisted that
the national commission should consider the human aspects of
the case. Columns of newspapers and days of investigation were
given to the discussion of the deeds of violence, having nothing
to do with the original demands of the strikers, and entering
only into the value set upon human life by each of the con-
testing parties; did the union encourage violence against non-
union men, or did it really do everything to suppress it, living
up to its creed, which was to maintain a standard of living that
families might be properly housed and fed and protected from
debilitating toil and disease, that children might be nurtured
into American citizenship ; did the operators protect their men
as far as possible from mine damp, from length of hours proven
by experience to be exhausting ; did they pay a sufficient wage
to the mine laborer to allow him to send his children to school ;
questions such as these, a study of the human problem, invaded
the commission day after day during its sitting. One felt for
the moment the first wave of a rising tide of humanitarianism,
until the normal ideals of the laborer to secure food and shelter
for his family and security for his old age, and a larger opportunity
for his children, become the ideals of democratic government.
IMMIGRATION 21
NEW IDEALISM OF SIMPLE FOLK
It may be owing to the fact that the working man is brought
in direct contact with the situation as a desperate problem of
living wage or starvation, it may be that wisdom is at hef old
trick of residing in the hearts of the simple, or that this new
idealism which is that of a reasonable life and labor must from
the very nature of things proceed from those who labor, or
possibly because amelioration arises whence it is so sorely needed,
but certainly it is true, that while the rest of the country talks
of assimilation as if we were a huge digestive apparatus, the man
with whom the immigrant has come most sharply into compe-
tition has been forced into fraternal relations with him.
All the peoples of the world have become part of our tribunal,
and their sense of pity, their clamor for personal kindness, their
insistence upon the right to join in our progress, cannot be dis-
regarded. The burdens and sorrows of men have unexpectedly
become intelligible and urgent to this nation, and it is only by
accepting them with some magnanimity that we can develop
the larger sense of justice which is becoming world-wide and is
lying in ambush, as it were, to manifest itself in governmental
relations. Men of all nations are determining upon the abolition
of degrading poverty, disease, and intellectual weakness with
their resulting industrial inefficiency. This manifests itself
in labor legislation in England, in the Imperial Sick and Old-
Age Insurance Acts of Germany, in the enormous system of
public education in the United States.
CONTEMPORANEOUS PATRIOTISM
To be afraid of it is to lose what we have. A government has
always received feeble support from its constituents as soon as
its demands appeared childish or remote. Citizens inevitably
neglect or abandon civic duty when it no longer embodies their
genuine desires. It is useless to hypnotize ourselves by unreal
talk of colonial ideals and patriotic duty toward immigrants as
if it were a question of passing a set of resolutions. The nation
must be saved by its lovers, by the patriots who possess adequate
and contemporaneous knowledge. A commingling of racial
22 INTRODUCTION
habits and national characteristics in the end must rest upon the
voluntary balance and concord of many forces.
We may with justice demand from the scholar the philosophic
statement, the reconstruction and reorganization of the knowl-
edge which he possesses, only if we agree to make it over into
healthy and direct expressions of free living.
I. HISTORY
COLONIZATION AND IMMIGRATION1
EDWARD EVERETT
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE HISTORICAL
SOCIETY : Although I appear before you at the season at
which the various religious, moral, and philanthropic societies
usually hold their annual meetings to discuss the stirring and
controverted topics of the day, I need not say to you that the
proprieties of this occasion require me to abstain from such sub-
jects; and to select a theme falling, to some extent at least,
within the province of an historical society. I propose, ac-
cordingly, this evening, to attempt a sketch of the history of
the discovery and colonization of America and of immigration
to the United States. I can of course offer you, within the
limits of a single address, but a most superficial view of so
vast a subject; but I have thought that even a sketch of a
subject, which concerns us so directly and in so many ways,
would suggest important trains of reflection to thoughtful
minds. Words written or spoken are at best but a kind of
shorthand, to be filled up by the reader or hearer. I shall be
gratified if, after honoring my hasty sketch with your kind
attention, you shall deem it worth filling up from your own
stores of knowledge and thought. You will forgive me, if, in
the attempt to give a certain completeness to the narrative, I
shall be led to glance at a few facts, which, however inter-
esting, may seem to you too familiar for repetition.
In the last quarter of the fifteenth century, an Italian mari-
ner, a citizen of the little republic of Genoa, who had hitherto
gained his livelihood as a pilot in the commercial marine of
different countries, made his appearance successively at various
1 A lecture delivered before the New York Historical Society, in Metropolitan
Hall, on the first of June, 1853.
23
24 HISTORY
courts in the South and West of Europe, soliciting patronage
and aid for a bold and novel project in navigation. The
state of the times was in some degree favorable to the adven-
ture. The Portuguese had for half a century been pushing
their discoveries southward upon the coast of Africa, and they
had ventured into the Atlantic as far as the Azores. Several
conspiring causes, and especially the invention of the art of
printing, had produced a general revival of intelligence. Still,
however, the state of things in this respect was at that time
very different from what we witness in the middle of the nine-
teenth century. On the part of the great mass of mankind,
there was but little improvement over the darkness of the
Middle Ages. The new culture centered in the convent, the
court, and the university, places essentially distrustful of bold
novelties.
The idea of reaching the East by a voyage around the Af-
rican continent had begun to assume consistency; but the
vastly more significant idea, that the earth is a globe and ca-
pable of being circumnavigated, had by no means become
incorporated into the general intelligence of the age. The
Portuguese navigators felt themselves safe as they crept along
the African coast, venturing each voyage a few leagues farther,
doubling a new headland, ascending some before unexplored
river, holding a palaver with some new tribe of the native races.
But to turn the prows of their vessels boldly to the west, to
embark upon an ocean, not believed, in the popular geography
of the day, to have an outer shore, to pass that bourne from
which no traveler had ever returned, and from which experience
had not taught that any traveler could return, and thus to
reach the East by sailing in a western direction, — this was a
conception which no human being is known to have formed before
Columbus, and which he proposed to the governments of Italy, of
Spain, of Portugal, and for a long time without success. The
state of science was not such as to enable men to discriminate
between the improbable and untried on the one hand, and the
impossible and absurd on the other. They looked upon Columbus
as we did thirty years ago upon Captain Symmes.
But the illustrious adventurer persevered. Sorrow and dis-
appointment clouded his spirits, but did not shake his faith nor
COLONIZATION AND IMMIGRATION 25
subdue his will. His well-instructed imagination had taken
firm hold of the idea that the earth is a sphere. What seemed
to the multitude even of the educated of that day a doubtful
and somewhat mystical theory; what appeared to the un-
informed mass a monstrous paradox, contradicted by every step
we take upon the broad, flat earth which we daily tread beneath
our feet ; — that great and fruitful truth revealed itself to the
serene intelligence of Columbus as a practical fact, on which he
was willing to stake all he had, — character and life. And it
deserves ever to be borne in mind, as the most illustrious example
of the connection of scientific theory with great practical results,
that the discovery of America, with all its momentous conse-
quences to mankind, is owing to the distinct conception in the
mind of Columbus of this single scientific proposition, — the
terraqueous earth is a sphere.
After years of fruitless and heart-sick solicitation, after offer-
ing in effect to this monarch and to that monarch the gift of
a hemisphere, the great discoverer touches upon a partial suc-
cess. He succeeds, not in enlisting the sympathy of his country-
men at Genoa and Venice for a brave brother sailor; not in
giving a new direction to the spirit of maritime adventure which
had so long prevailed in Portugal ; not in stimulating the com-
mercial thrift of Henry the Seventh, or the pious ambition of the
Catholic King. His sorrowful perseverance touched the heart
of a noble princess, — worthy the throne which she adorned.
The New World, which was just escaping the subtle kingcraft
of Ferdinand, was saved to Spain by the womanly compassion
of Isabella.
It is truly melancholy, however, to contemplate the wretched
equipment, for which the most powerful princess in Christendom
was ready to pledge her jewels. Floating castles will soon be
fitted out to convey the miserable natives of Africa to the golden
shores of America, and towering galleons will be dispatched to
bring home the guilty treasures to Spain ; but three small vessels,
two of which were without a deck, and neither of them probably
exceeding the capacity of a pilot-boat, and even these impressed
into the public service, composed the expedition, fitted out under
royal patronage, to realize that magnificent conception in which the
creative mind of Columbus had planted the germs of a new world.
26 HISTORY
No chapter of romance equals the interest of this expedi-
tion. The most fascinating of the works of fiction which have
issued from the modern press have, to my taste, no attraction
compared with the pages in which the first voyage of Columbus
is described by Robertson, and especially by our own Irving
and Prescott, the last two enjoying the advantage over the
great Scottish historian of possessing the lately discovered
journals and letters of Columbus himself. The departure from
Palos, where a few years before he had begged a morsel of bread
and a cup of water for his wayworn child ; his final farewell to
the Old World at the Canaries; his entrance upon the trade
winds, which then, for the first time, filled a European sail;
the portentous variation of the needle, never before observed;
the fearful course westward and westward, day after day and
night after night, over the unknown ocean ; the mutinous and
ill-appeased crew ; — at length, when hope had turned to despair
in every heart but one, the tokens of land ; the cloud-banks on
the western horizon ; the logs of driftwood ; the fresh shrub
floating with its leaves and berries ; the flocks of land-birds ; the
shoals of fish that inhabit shallow water ; the indescribable smell
of the shore ; the mysterious presentiment that ever goes before
a great event ; — and, finally, on that ever memorable night
of the 1 2th of October, 1492, the moving light seen by the sleep-
less eye of the great discoverer himself from the deck of the
Santa Maria, and in the morning the real, undoubted land, swell-
ing up from the bosom of the deep, with its plains, and hills, and
forests, and rocks, and streams, and strange, new races of men ; —
these are incidents in which the authentic history of the discovery
of our continent excels the specious wonders of romance, as
much as gold excels tinsel, or the sun in the heavens outshines
that flickering taper.
But it is no part of my purpose to dwell upon this inter-
esting narrative, or to follow out this most wonderful of histo-
ries, srnking as it soon did into a tale of sorrow for Columbus
himself, and before long ending in one of the most frightful
tragedies in the annals of the world. Such seems to be the
law of humanity, that events the most desirable and achieve-
ments the most important should, either in their inception or
COLONIZATION AND IMMIGRATION 27
progress, be mixed up with disasters, crimes, and sorrows which
it makes the heart sick to record.
The discovery of America, I need hardly say, produced a
vast extension of the territory of the power under whose aus-
pices the discovery was made. In contemplating this point,
we encounter one of the most terrible mysteries in the history
of our race. "Extension of territory!" you are ready to ex-
claim ; "how could Spain acquire any territory by the fact that
a navigator, sailing under her patronage, had landed upon one or
two islands near the continent of America, and coasted for a few
hundred miles along its shores? These shores and islands are
not a desert on which Columbus, like a Robinson Crusoe of a
higher order, has landed and taken possession. They are occupied
and settled, — crowded, even, with inhabitants, — subject to
the government of their native chiefs ; and neither by inheritance,
colonization, nor as yet by conquest, has any human being in
Europe a right to rule over them or to possess a square foot of their
territory." Such are the facts of the case, and such, one would
say, ought to be the law of equity of the case. But alas for the
native chiefs and the native races ! Before he sailed from Spain,
Columbus was furnished with a piece of parchment a foot and a
half square, by Ferdinand and Isabella, creating him their
Viceroy and High Admiral in all the seas, islands, and con-
tinents which he should discover, his heirs forever to enjoy
the same offices. The Viceroy of the absolute monarchs of
Aragon and Castile !
Thus was America conquered before it was discovered. By
the law of nations as then understood, (and I fear there is
less change in its doctrine at the present day than we should
be ready to think,) a sovereign right to the territory and gov-
ernment of all newly discovered regions inhabited by heathen
tribes we believed to vest in the Christian prince under whose
auspices the discovery was made, subject to the ratification
of the Pope, as the ultimate disposer of the kingdoms of the
earth. Such was the law of nations, as then understood, in
virtue of which, from the moment Columbus, on that memora-
ble night to which I have alluded, caught, from the quarter-
deck of the Santa Maria, the twinkling beams of a taper from
28 HISTORY
the shores of San Salvador, all the territorial and political
rights of its simple inhabitants were extinguished forever.
When on the following morning the keel of his vessel grated
upon the much longed for strand, it completed, with more than
electric speed, that terrible circuit which connected the islands
and the continent to the footstool of the Spanish throne. As
he landed upon the virgin shore, its native inhabitants, could
they have foreseen the future, would have felt, if I may pre-
sume thus to apply the words, that virtue had gone out of
it forever. With some of them the process was sharp and
instantaneous, with others more gradual, but not less sure ; with
some, even after nearly four centuries, it is still going on ; but with
all it was an irrevocable doom. The wild and warlike, the in-
dolent and semicivilized, the bloody Aztec, the inoffensive Peru-
vian, the fierce Araucanian, — all fared alike ; a foreign rule and
an iron yoke settled or is settling down upon their necks forever.
Such was the law of nations of that day, not enacted, how-
ever, by Spain. It was in reality the old principle of the right
of the strongest, disguised by a pretext ; a colossal iron falsehood
gilded over with the thin foil of a seeming truth. It was the same
principle which prompted the eternal wars of the Greeks and
Romans. Aristotle asserts, without qualification, that the Greeks
had a perpetual right of war and conquest against the barbarians,
- that is, all the rest of the world ; and the pupil of Aristotle
proclaimed this doctrine at the head of the Macedonian phalanx
on the banks of the Indus. The irruption of the barbarous races
into Europe, during the centuries that preceded and followed
Christianity, rested on as good a principle, — rather better, -
the pretext only was varied ; although the Gauls and Goths did
not probably trouble themselves much about pretexts. They
adopted rather the simple philosophy of the robber chieftain
of the Scottish Highlands :
Pent in this fortress of the North,
Think'st thou we will not sally forth,
To spoil the spoiler as we may,
And from the robber rend the prey ?
When the Mohammedan races rose to power, they claimed
dominion over all who disbelieved the Koran. Conversion or
COLONIZATION AND IMMIGRATION 29
extermination was the alternative which they offered to the
world, and which was announced in letters of fire and blood
from Spain to the Ganges. The states of Christian Europe
did but retort the principle and the practice, when, in a series
of crusades, kept up for more than three hundred years, they
poured desolation over the west of Asia, in order to rescue
the sepulcher of the Prince of Peace from the possession of
unbelievers.
Such were the principles of the public law and the practice
under them, as they existed when the great discoveries of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries took place. When the Por-
tuguese began to push their adventures far to the south on
the coast of Africa, in order to give to those principles the
highest sanction, they procured of Pope Nicholas the Fifth, in
1454, the grant of the right of sovereignty over all the heathen
tribes, nations, and countries discovered or to be discovered
by them, from Africa to India, and the exclusive title thus
conferred was recognized by all the other nations of Chris-
tendom.
On the return of Columbus from his first voyage, the king
of Spain, not to fall behind his neighbors in the strength of
his title, lost no time in obtaining from Pope Alexander the
Sixth a similar grant of all the heathen lands discovered by
Columbus, or which might hereafter be discovered, in the west.
To preclude as far as possible all* conflict with Portugal, the
famous line of demarcation was projected from the north to
the south, a hundred leagues west of the Azores, cutting the
earth into halves, like an apple, and, as far as the new dis-
coveries were concerned, giving to the Spaniards all west of
the line, and confirming all east of it to the Portuguese, in virtue
of the grant already mentioned of Pope Nicholas the Fifth.
I regret that want of time will not allow me to dwell upon
the curious history of this line of demarcation, for the benefit
of all states having boundary controversies, and especially
our sister republics of Nicaragua and Costa Rica. It is suf-
ficient to say, that, having had its origin in the papal bull just
referred to of 1454, it remained a subject of dispute and col-
lision for three hundred and sixty-one years, and was finally
settled at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 !
3o HISTORY
The territorial extension of Portugal and Spain, which re-
sulted from the discovery of America, was followed by the
most extraordinary effects upon the commerce, the finances,
and the politics generally, of those two countries, and through
them of the world. The overland trade to the East, the great
commercial interest of the Middle Ages, was abandoned. The
whole of South America, and a considerable part of North
America, were, in the course of the sixteenth century, settled
by those governments; who organized in their Transatlantic
possessions a colonial system of the most rigid and despotic
character, reflecting as far as was practicable in distant prov-
inces beyond the sea the stern features of the mother coun-
try. The precious metals, and a monopoly of the trade to the
East, were the great objects to be* secured. Aliens were for-
bidden to enter the American viceroyalties ; none but a con-
traband trade was carried on by foreigners at the seaports.
To prevent this trade, a severe right of search was instituted
along the entire extent of the coasts, on either ocean. I have
recently had an opportunity, in another place, to advert to the
effects of this system upon the international relations of Eu-
rope.1 Native subjects could emigrate to these vast colonial
possessions only with the permission of the government.
Liberty of speech and of the press was unknown. Instead
of affording an asylum to persons dissenting from the religion
of the state, conformity of belief was, if possible, enforced
more rigidly in the colonies than in the mother country. No
relaxation in this respect has, I believe, taken place in the
remaining colonies of Spain even to the present day. As for
the aboriginal tribes, after the first work of extermination was
over a remnant was saved from destruction by being reduced
to a state of predial servitude. The dejected and spiritless
posterity of the warlike tribes that offered no mean resistance
to Cortes and Pizarro are now the hewers of wood and the
drawers of water to Mexico and Peru. In a word, from the
extreme southern point of Patagonia to the northernmost limit
of New Mexico, I am not aware that anything hopeful was
1 Speech on the affairs of Central America, in the Senate of the United States,
aist of March, 1853.
COLONIZATION AND IMMIGRATION 31
done for human improvement by either of the European crowns
which added these vast domains to their territories.
If this great territorial extension was fruitless of beneficial
consequences to America, it was not less so to the mother
countries. For Spain it was the commencement of a period,
not of prosperity, but of decline. The rapid influx of the pre-
cious metals, in the absence of civil liberty and of just prin-
ciples and institutions of intercourse and industry, was pro-
ductive of manifold evils; and from the reign of Philip the
Second, if not of Charles the Fifth, the Spanish monarchy
began to sink from its haughty position at the head of the
European family. I do not ascribe this downfall exclusively
to the cause mentioned ; but the possession of the two Indies,
with all their treasures, did nothing to arrest, accelerated even,
the progress of degeneracy. Active causes of decline no doubt
existed at home ; and of these the Inquisition was the chief.
There was the weight that pulled her down.
The spirit of intolerance and persecution, the reproach and
scandal of all countries and all churches, Protestant as well as
Catholic (not excepting the Pilgrim Fathers of New England),
found an instrument in the Holy Office in Spain, in the six-
teenth century, such as it never possessed in any other age or
country. It was not merely Jews and heretics whom it bound
to the stake ; it kindled a slow, unquenchable fire in the heart of
Castile and Leon. The horrid atrocities practiced at home and
abroad, not only in the Netherlands, but in every city of the
mother country, cried to Heaven for vengeance upon Spain;
nor could she escape it. She intrenched herself behind the eternal
Cordilleras ; she took to herself the wings of the morning, and
dwelt in the uttermost parts of the sea ; but even there the arm
of retribution laid hold of her, and the wrongs of both hemi-
spheres were avenged in her degeneracy and fall.
But let us pass on to the next century, during which events
of the utmost consequence followed each other in rapid suc-
cession, and the foundations of institutions destined to influ-
ence the fortunes of Christendom were laid by humble men,
32 HISTORY
who little comprehended their own work. In the course of
the seventeenth century, the French and English took posses-
sion of all that part of North America which was not pre-
occupied by the Spaniards. The French entered by the
St. Lawrence ; followed that noble artery to the heart of the
continent ; traced the great lakes to their parent rivulets and
weeping fountains; descended the Mississippi. Miracles of
humble and unavailing heroism were performed by their gallant
adventurers and pious missionaries in the depths of our Western
wilderness. The English stretched along the coast. The geog-
rapher would have pronounced that the French, in appro-
priating to themselves the mighty basins of the Mississippi and
the St. Lawrence, had got possession of the better part of the
continent. But it was an attempt to compose the second volume
of the "Fortunes of America," in advance of the first. This it was
ordained should be written at Jamestown and Plymouth. The
French, though excelling all other nations of the world in the
art of communicating for temporary purposes with savage
tribes, seem, still more than the Spaniards, to be destitute of the
august skill required to found new states.1 I do not know that
there is such a thing in the world as a colony of France growing
up into a prosperous commonwealth. Half a million of French
peasants in Lower Canada, tenaciously adhering to the manners
and customs which their fathers brought from Normandy two
centuries ago, and a third part of that number of planters of
French descent in Louisiana, are all that is left to bear living
witness to the amazing fact, that in the middle of the last century
France was the mistress of the better half of North America.
It was on the Atlantic coast, and in the colonies originally
planted or soon acquired by England, that the great work
of the seventeenth century was performed, — slowly, toilsomely,
effectively. A mighty work for America and mankind, of which
even we, fond and proud of it as we are, do but faintly guess
the magnitude ! It could hardly be said, at the time, to prosper
in any of its parts. It yielded no return to the pecuniary capital
invested. The political relations of the colonies from the first
were those of encroachment and resistance ; and even the moral
*"La France saura mal coloniser et n'y re"ussira qu'avec peine." — VICTOR
HUGO, "Le Rhin," Tom. II, p. 280.
COLONIZATION AND IMMIGRATION 33
principle, as far as there was one, on which they were founded, was
not consistently carried out. There was conflict with the savages,
war with the French and Spaniards, jarring and feud between
neighboring colonies, persecution of dissenting individuals and
sects, perpetual discord with the crown and the proprieta-
ries. Yet, in the main and on the whole, the WORK was done.
Things that did not work singly worked together ; or if they did
not work together, they worked by reaction and collision. Feeble
germs of settlement grew to the consistency of powerful colonies ;
habits of civil government rooted themselves in a soil that was
continually stirred by political agitation; the frame of future
republics knit itself, as it were in embryo, under a monarchical
system of colonial rule ; till in the middle of the eighteenth
century the approach of mighty changes began to be dimly
foreseen by gifted spirits. A faint streak of purple light blushed
along the eastern sky.
Two things worth mentioning contributed to the result.
One was the absence of the precious metals. The British
colonies were rich in the want of gold. As the abundance of
gold and silver in Mexico and Peru contributed, in various
ways, to obstruct the prosperity of the Spanish colonies, the
want of them acted not less favorably here. In the first settle-
ment of a savage wilderness the golden attraction is too powerful
for the ordinary routine of life. It produces a feverish excitement
unfavorable to the healthy growth and calm action of the body
politic. Although California has from the first had the advantage
of being incorporated into a stable political system, of which, as
a sister State, she forms an integral part, it is quite doubtful
whether, looking to her permanent well-being, the gold is to be
a blessing to her. It will hasten her settlement ; but that would
at any rate have advanced with great rapidity. One of the most
intellectual men in this country, the author of one of the most
admirable works in our language, I mean "Two Years before
the Mast," once remarked to me, that "California would be one
of the finest countries in the world to live in, if it were not for
the gold."
The other circumstance which operated in the most favor-
able manner upon the growth of the Anglo-American colonies
was the fact, that they were called into existence less by the
34
HISTORY
government than the people; that they were mainly settled,
not by bodies of colonists, but by individual immigrants. The
crown gave charters of government and grants of land, and a
considerable expenditure was made by some of the companies and
proprietors who received these grants ; but upon the whole, the
United States were settled by individuals, — the adventurous,
resolute, high-spirited, and in many cases persecuted men and
women, who sought a home and a refuge beyond the sea ; and
such was the state of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, that it furnished a succession of victims of a long series
of political and religious disasters and persecutions, who found,
one after another, a safe and a congenial retreat in some one of
the American colonies.
This noble theme has been treated with a beauty and a
power, by one whom I need not name in this presence (the
historian of the United States), which, without impairing their
authenticity, have converted the severe pages of our history
into a magnificent Odyssey of national adventure. I can
but glance at the dates. The first settlement that of Vir-
ginia, was commenced in the spirit of worldly enterprise, with
no slight dash, however, of chivalry and romance on the part
of its leader. In the next generation this colony became the
favorite resort of the loyal cavaliers and gentlemen who were
disgusted by the austerities of the English Commonwealth, or
fell under its suspicion. In the meantime, New England was
founded by those who suffered the penalties of nonconformity.
The mighty change of 1640 stopped the tide of emigration to
New England, but recruited Virginia with those who were dis-
affected to Cromwell. In 1624 the island of Manhattan, of which
you have perhaps heard, and if not, you will find its history
related with learning, judgment, and good taste, by a loyal* de-
scendant of its early settlers (Mr. Brodhead) , was purchased of
the Indians for twenty-four dollars; a sum of money, by the
way, which seems rather low for twenty-two thousand acres
of land, including the site of this great metropolis, but which
would, if put out at compound interest at 7 per cent in
1624, not perhaps fall so very much below even its present
value; though I admit that a dollar for a thousand acres is
quite cheap for choice spots on the Fifth Avenue. Maryland
COLONIZATION AND IMMIGRATION 35
next attracted those who adhered to the ancient faith of the
Christian world. New Jersey and Pennsylvania were mainly
settled by persecuted Quakers ; but the latter offered an asylum
to the Germans whom the sword of Louis the Fourteenth drove
from the Palatinate. The French Huguenots, driven out by
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, scattered themselves from
Massachusetts to Carolina. The Dutch and Swedish settlements
on the Hudson and the Delaware provided a kindred home for
such of their countrymen as desired to try the fortune of the New
World. The Whigs of England who rebelled against James the
Second, in 1685, and were sent to the Transatlantic colonies, lived
long enough to meet in exile the adherents of his son, who
rebelled against George the First, in 1715. The oppressed
Protestants of Salzburg came with General Oglethorpe to
Georgia ; and the Highlanders who fought for Charles Edward,
in 1745, were deported by hundreds to North Carolina. They
were punished by being sent from their bleak hills and sterile
moors to a land of abundance and liberty ; they were banished
from oatmeal porridge to meat twice a day. The Gaelic lan-
guage is still spoken by their descendants, and thousands of their
kindred at the present day would no doubt gladly share their
exile.
There is no doubt that the hardships which awaited the
emigrant at that early day were neither few nor slight, though
greatly exaggerated for want of information. Goldsmith, in
"The Deserted Village," published in 1769, gives us a some-
what amusing picture of the state of things as he supposed it
to exist beyond the ocean at that time. As his local allusion
is to Georgia, it is probable that he formed his impressions
from the accounts which were published at London about
the middle of the last century by some of the discontented
settlers of that colony. Goldsmith, being well acquainted
with General Oglethorpe, was, likely enough to have had his
attention called to the subject. Perhaps you will allow me
to enliven my dull prose with a few lines of his beautiful poetry.
After describing the sufferings of the poor in London at that
time, reverting to the condition of the inhabitants of his imaginary
Auburn, and asking whether they probably shared the woes he
had just painted, he thus answers his question :
36 HISTORY
Ah, no ! To distant climes, a dreary scene,
Where half the convex world intrudes between,
Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go,
Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe.
Far different there from all that charmed before,
The various terrors of that horrid shore :
Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray,
And fiercely shed intolerable day ;
Those matted woods, where birds forgot to sing,
But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling ;
Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crowned,
Where the dark scorpion gathers death around, —
Where, at each step, the stranger fears to wake
The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake, —
Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey,
And savage men more murderous still than they ;
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies,
Mingling the ravaged landscape with the skies.
In this rather uninviting sketch, it must be confessed that
it is not easy to recognize the natural features of that thriv-
ing State, which possesses at the present day a thousand miles
of railroad, and which, by her rapidly increasing population,
her liberal endowment of colleges, schools, and churches, and
all the other social institutions of a highly improved com-
munity, is fast earning the name of the "Empire State" of
the South.
After repeating these lines, it is scarcely necessary to say
that there was much ignorance and exaggeration prevailing
in Europe as to the state of things in America. But a few
years after Goldsmith's poem appeared, an event occurred
which aroused and fixed the attention of the world. The revolt
of the Colonies in 1775, the Declaration of Independence in
1776, the battles of the Revolutionary War, the alliance with
France, the acknowledgment of American Independence by
the treaty of 1783, the establishment of a great federative
republic, the illustrious career of Lafayette, the European rep-
utation of Franklin, and, above all, the character of Wash-
ington, gave to the United States a great and brilliant name
in the family of nations. Thousands in every part of Europe
COLONIZATION AND IMMIGRATION 37
then probably heard of America, with any distinct impres-
sions, for the first time ; and they now heard of it as a region
realizing the wildest visions. Hundreds in every walk of life
began to resort to America, and especially ardent young men,
who were dissatisfied with the political condition of Europe.
Among these was your late venerable President, Albert Gal-
latin, one of the most eminent men of the last generation, who
came to this country before he attained his majority; and the
late celebrated Sir Isambert Brunei, the architect of the Thames
Tunnel. He informed me that he became a citizen of the State
of New York before the adoption of the Federal Constitution,
and that he made some surveys to ascertain the practicability
of the great work which afterwards united the waters of Lake Erie
with the waters of the Atlantic, and gave immortality to the
name of your Clinton.
Before the Revolution, the great West was shut even to
the subjects of England. A royal proclamation of 1763 for-
bade the extension of the settlements in North America beyond
the Ohio. But without such a prohibition, the still unbroken
power of the Indian tribes would have prevented any such
extension. The successful result of the Revolutionary War did
not materially alter the state of things in this respect. The
native tribes were still formidable, and the British posts in the
Northwestern Territory were retained. So little confidence was
placed in the value of a title to land, even within the limits of the
State of New York, that the enterprising citizens of Massachu-
setts, Messrs. Gorham and Phelps, who bought six millions of
acres of land on the Genesee River, shortly after the Peace, for
a few cents the acre, were obliged to abandon the greater part
of the purchase from the difficulty of finding under purchasers
enough to enable them to meet the first installments.
On one occasion, when Judge Gorham was musing in a state
of mental depression on the failure of this magnificent speculation
he was visited by a friend and townsman, who had returned from
a journey to Canandaigua, then just laid out. This friend tried
to cheer the Judge with a bright vision of the future growth of
western New York. Kindling with his theme, he pointed to a
son of Judge Gorham, who* was in the room, and added, "You
and I shall not live to see the day, but that lad, if he reaches three
38 HISTORY
score years and ten, will see a daily stage-coach running as far
west as Canandaigua ! " That lad is still living. What he has seen
in the shape of travel and conveyance in the State of New York,
it is not necessary before this audience to say.
It was the adoption of the Constitution of the United States,
in 1789, which gave stability to the Union and confidence to
the people. This was the Promethean fire, which kindled
the body politic into vital action. It created a national force.
The Indians on the southwest were pacified. On the north-
western frontier the troops of the general government were at
first defeated; but after the victory of Wayne, and the peace
of Greeneville, in 1795, the British posts were surrendered,
and the tide of emigration began to pour in. It was rather,
however, from the older States than from foreign countries.
The extensive region northwest of the Ohio had already re-
ceived its political organization as a territory of the United
States by the ever memorable Ordinance of 1787.
While Providence was thus opening on this continent the
broadest region that ever was made accessible to human prog-
ress, want, or adventure, it happened that the kingdoms of
Europe were shaken by the terrible convulsions incident to
the French Revolution. France herself first, and afterwards
the countries overrun by her revolutionary armies, poured
forth their children by thousands. I believe there are no offi-
cial returns of the number of immigrants to the United States
at the time, but it was very large. Among them was M. de
Talleyrand, the celebrated minister of every government in
France, from that of the Directory, in 1797, to that of Louis
Philippe, in whose reign he died. I saw at Peale's Museum,
in Philadelphia, the original oath of allegiance, subscribed by
him in I794.1 Louis Philippe himself emigrated to this country,
1 Since this lecture was delivered, I have been favored with a copy of this paper
by Edward D. Ingraham, Esq., of Philadelphia. It is in the following words:
I, Charles Maurice Talleyrand Perigord, formerly Administrator of the Depart-
ment of Paris, son of Joseph Daniel de Talleyrand Perigord, a General of the
Armies of France, born at Paris and arrived at Philadelphia from London, do
swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to the Commonwealth of Penn-
sylvania and to the United States of America, and that I will not at any time will-
fully and knowingly do any matter or thing prejudicial to the freedom and inde-
pendence thereof. CH> MAU> D£ TALLEYRAND PERIGORD.
COLONIZATION AND IMMIGRATION 39
where he passed three years, and is well remembered by many
persons still living. He habitually spoke with gratitude of the
kindness which he experienced in every part of the Union.
As yet, no acquisition of territory had been made by the
United States beyond the limits of the British colonies; but
in 1803 a most important step was taken in the purchase of
Louisiana, by which our possessions were extended, though
with an unsettled boundary both on the south and the north,
to the Pacific Ocean. The War of 1812 reduced the Indian
tribes in the Northwestern States ; and the campaigns of General
Jackson a few years later produced the same effect on the
southern frontier. Florida was acquired by treaty from Spain in
1819; and the Indians in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi
were removed to the west of the river Mississippi ten or twelve
years later. Black Hawk's war in Wisconsin took place in 1833,
and a series of Indian treaties, both before and after that event,
extinguished the Indian title to all the land east of the Mississippi,
and to considerable tracts west of that river. Texas was annexed
to the Union in 1845, and in 1848 New Mexico and California
came into our possession.
I have, as you perceive, run rapidly over these dates, com-
pressing into one paragraph the starting points in the history
of future commonwealths, simply in their bearing on the subject
of immigration. These acquisitions, not inferior in extent to
all that there was solid in the Roman conquests, have resulted
in our possession of a zone of territory of the width of twenty
degrees of latitude, stretching from ocean to ocean, and nearly
equal in extent to the whole of Europe.1 It is all subject to the
power of the United States ; a portion of it has attained the
civilization of the Old World, while other portions shade off
through all degrees of culture, to the log-house of the frontier
settler, the cabin of the trapper, and the wigwam of the savage.
Within this vast domain there are millions of acres of fertile
land, to be purchased at moderate prices, according to its position
and its state of improvement, and there are hundreds of millions
of acres in a state of nature, and gradually selling at the govern-
ment price of a dollar and a quarter per acre.
1 Square miles in the United States, 3,260,073 ; in Europe, 3,700, 971. — Amer-
ican Almanac for 1853, pp. 315 and 316.
40 HISTORY
It is this which most strikes the European imagination.
The Old World is nearly all appropriated by individuals. There
are public domains in most foreign countries, but of comparatively
small amount, and mostly forests. With this exception, every
acre of land in Europe is private property, and in such countries
as England, the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Italy,
what little changes hands is sold only at a high price. I presume
the number of landholders in England is far less than in the State
of New York. In the course of the French Revolution the land
has been greatly divided and subdivided in France and in Ger-
many, and is now held in small farms ; but owing to the limited
quantity of purchasable land, these farms, when sold, are sold
only at high prices. Generally speaking, the mass of the in-
habitants of Europe regard the ability to hold and occupy a
considerable landed property as the summit of human fortune.
The suggestion that there is a country beyond the ocean, where
fertile land is to be purchased, in any quantity, at a dollar and a
quarter per acre, and that dollar and a quarter to be earned in
many parts of the country by the labor of a single day, strikes
them as the tales of Aladdin's lamp or AH Baba's cave would
strike us, if we thought they were true. They forget the costs
and sacrifices of leaving home, the ocean to be traversed, the
weary pilgrimage in the land of strangers after their arrival. They
see nothing with the mind's eye but the "land of promise" ; they
reflect upon nothing but the fact, that there is a region on the
earth's surface where a few days' unskilled labor will purchase
the fee simple of an ample farm.
Such an attraction would be irresistible under any circum-
stances to the population of an old country, where, as I have
just said, the land is all appropriated, and to be purchased,
in any considerable quantity, only at prices which put its
acquisition beyond the thought of the masses. But this is
but half the tale. It must not be forgotten that in this ancient
and venerable Europe, whose civilization is the growth of two
thousand years, where some of the luxurious refinements of
life are carried to a perfection of which we have scarcely an idea
in this country, a considerable part of the population, even in
the most prosperous regions, pass their lives in a state but one
remove from starvation, — poorly fed, poorly clothed, poorly
COLONIZATION AND IMMIGRATION 41
housed, without education, without political privileges, with-
out moral culture. The average wages of the agricultural
laborer in England were estimated a year ago at 95. 6d. ster-
ling— about $2.37^- — per week. The condition of the work-
ing population on the continent of Europe is in no degree
better, if as good. They eat but little animal food either in
England or on the Continent. We form romantic notions at a
distance of countries that abound in wine and oil; but in the
best governed states of Italy, — in Tuscany, for instance, — the
peasantry, though they pass their lives in the vineyard and the
olive orchard, consume the fruit of neither. I have seen the
Tuscan peasants, unable to bear the cost of the most ordinary
wine from the vineyards in which their cottages are embow-
ered, and which can be bought at retail for a cent a flask, pour-
ing water over the grape skins as they come from the press,
and making that their beverage.
Even for persons in comparatively easy circumstances in
Europe, there are strong inducements to emigrate to America.
Most of the governments are arbitrary, the taxes are oppres-
sive, the exactions of military service onerous in the extreme.
Add to all this the harassing insecurity of life. For sixty or
seventy years the Continent has been one wide theater of
scarcely intermitted convulsion. Every country in it has been
involved in war; there is scarcely one that has not passed
through a revolution. We read of events like these in the
newspapers, we look upon them with curiosity as articles of
mere intelligence, or they awaken images of our own revolu-
tion, which we regard only with -joyous associations. Far dif-
ferent the state of things in crowded Europe, of which the fair-
est fields are trampled in every generation by mighty armies
into bloody mire ! Dazzled by the brilliancy of the military
exploits of which we read at a safe distance, we forget the
anxieties of those who grow up within the sound of the can-
non's roar, whose prospects in life are ruined, their business
broken up, their little accumulations swept away by the bank-
ruptcy of governments or the general paralysis of the industry
of the country, their sons torn from them by ruthless conscrip-
tions, the means of educating and bringing up their families
consumed in a day by disastrous emergencies. Terrified by
42 HISTORY
the recent experience or the tradition of these miseries, thou-
sands emigrate to the land of promise, flying before, not merely
the presence, but the "rumor of war," which the Great Teacher
places on a level with the reality.
Ever and anon some sharp specific catastrophe gives an in-
tense activity to emigration. When France, in the lowest
depth of her Revolution, plunged to a lower depth of suffering
and crime, when the Reign of Terror was enthroned, and when
everything in any way conspicuous, whether for station, wealth,
talent, or service, of every age and of either sex, from the crowned
monarch to the gray-haired magistrate and the timid maiden,
was brought to the guillotine, hundreds of thousands escaped
at once from the devoted kingdom. The convulsions of San
Domingo drove most of the European population of that island
to the United States. But beyond everything else which has
been witnessed in modern times, the famine which prevailed a
few years since in Ireland gave a terrific impulse to emigration.
Not less, probably, than one million of her inhabitants left her
shores within five years. The population of this island, as highly
favored in the gifts of nature as any spot on the face of the earth,
has actually diminished more than 1,800,000 since the famine
year ; 1 the only example, perhaps, in history, of a similar result
in a country not visited by foreign war or civil convulsion. The
population ought, in the course of nature, to have increased
within ten years by at least that amount ; and in point of fact,
between 1840 and 1850, our own population increased by more
than six millions.
This prodigious increase of the population of the United
States is partly owing to the emigration from foreign coun-
tries, which has taken place under the influence of the causes
general and specific, to which I have alluded. Of late years,
from three to four hundred thousand immigrants are registered
at the several customhouses, as arriving in this country in the
course of a year. It is probable that a third as many more
enter by the Canadian frontier. Not much less than two mil-
lions of immigrants are supposed to have entered the United
States in the last ten years ; and it is calculated that there are
1 London Quarterly Review for December, 1851, p. 191.
COLONIZATION AND IMMIGRATION 43
living at the present day in the United States five millions of
persons, foreigners who have immigrated since 1790, and their
descendants.
There is nothing in the annals of mankind to be compared
to this; but there is a series of great movements which may
be contrasted with it. In the period of a thousand years,
which began about three or four hundred years before our
Saviour, the Roman republic and empire were from time to
time invaded by warlike races from the North and East, who
burst with overwhelming force upon the South and West of
Europe, and repeatedly carried desolation to the gates of
Rome. These multitudinous invaders were not armies of
men, they were in reality nations of hostile emigrants. They
came with their wives, with their " young barbarians," with
their Scythian cavalry, and their herds of cattle ; and they
came with no purpose of going away. The animus manendi
was made up before they abandoned their ice-clad homes ;
they left their Arctic allegiance behind them. They found
the sunny banks of the Arno and the Rhone more pleasant
than those of the Don and the Volga. Unaccustomed to the
sight of any tree more inviting than the melancholy fir and
the stunted birch, its branches glittering with snowy crystals, —
brought up under a climate where the generous fruits are un-
known, — these children of the North were not so much fasci-
nated as bewildered "in the land of the citron and myrtle";
they gazed with delighted astonishment at the spreading elm,
festooned with Falernian clusters ; they clutched, with a kind
of frantic joy, at the fruit of the fig tree and the olive ; — at
the melting peach, the luscious plum, the golden orange, and
the pomegranate, whose tinted cheek outblushes everything
but the living carnation of youthful love.
With grim delight the brood of winter view
A brighter day and heavens of azure hue,
Scent the new fragrance of the breathing rose,
And quaff the pendent vintage as it grows.
By the fortune of war, single detachments and even mighty
armies frequently suffered defeat ; but their place was imme-
diately taken by new hordes, which fell upon declining Rome
44 HISTORY
as the famished wolves in one of Catlin's pictures fall upon
an aged buffalo in our Western prairies. The imperial mon-
ster, powerful even in his decrepitude, would often scatter
their undisciplined array with his iron tusks, and trample them
by thousands under his brazen feet ; but when he turned back,
torn and bleeding, to his seven hills, tens of thousands came
howling from the Northern forests, who sprang on his throat
and buried their fangs in his lacerated side. Wherever they
conquered, and in the end they conquered everywhere, they
established themselves on the soil, invited newcomers, and
from their union with the former inhabitants, the nations of
the South and West of Europe, at the present day, for the
most part, trace their descent.
We know but little of the numbers thus thrown in upon
the Roman republic and empire in the course of eight or ten
centuries. They were, no doubt, greatly exaggerated by the
panic fear of the inhabitants ; and the pride of the Roman
historians would lead them to magnify the power before which
their own legions had so often quailed. But when we consider
the difficulty of subsisting a large number of persons in a march
through an unfriendly country, and this at a time when much of
the now cultivated portion of Europe was covered with forest
and swamp, I am disposed to think that the hosts which for a
succession of centuries overran the Roman empire did not in the
aggregate exceed in numbers the immigrants that have arrived in
the United States since 1790. In other words, I am inclined to
believe, that within the last sixty years the Old World has poured
in upon the United States a number of persons as great, with
their natural increase, as Asia sent into Europe in these armed
migrations of barbarous races.
Here, of course, the parallel ends. The races that invaded
Europe came to lay waste and to subjugate; the hosts that
cross the Atlantic are peaceful immigrants. The former
burst upon the Roman empire, and by oft-repeated strokes
beat it to the ground. The immigrants to America from all
countries come to cast in their lot with the native citizens,
and to share with us this great inheritance of civil and religious
liberty. The former were ferocious barbarians, half clad in
skins, speaking strange tongues, worshipping strange gods with
COLONIZATION AND IMMIGRATION 45
bloody rites. The latter are the children of the countries from
which the first European settlers of this continent proceeded,
and belong, with us, to the great common family of Christendom.
The former destroyed the culture of the ancient world, and it
was only after a thousand years that a better civilization grew
up from its ruins. The millions who have established themselves
in America within sixty years are, from the moment of their
arrival, gradually absorbed into the mass of the population,
conforming to the laws and molding themselves to the manners
of the country, and contributing their share to its prosperity and
strength.
It is a curious coincidence, that, as the first mighty wave
of the hostile migration that burst upon Europe before the
time of our Saviour consisted of tribes belonging to the great
Celtic race, the remains of which, identified by their original
dialect, are still found in Brittany, in Wales, in the Highlands of
Scotland, and especially in Ireland, so by far the greater portion
of the new and friendly immigration to the United States con-
sists of persons belonging to the same ardent, true-hearted, and
too often oppressed race. I have heard, in the villages of Wales
and the Highlands of Scotland, the Gospel preached in sub-
stantially the same language in which Brennus uttered his
haughty summons to Rome, and in which the mystic songs of
the Druids were chanted in the depths of the primeval forests of
France and England, in the time of Julius Caesar. It is still
spoken by thousands of Scotch, Welsh, and Irish immigrants, in
all parts of the United States.1
1 A learned and friendly correspondent, of Welsh origin, is of opinion that I
have fallen into a " gross error, in classing the Irish, Welsh, and Scotch as one
race of people, or Celts, whose language is the same. The slightest acquaintance,"
he adds, "with the Welsh and Irish languages would convince you that they were
totally different. A Welshman cannot understand one word of Irish, neither can
the latter understand one word of Welsh."
In a popular view of the subject this may be correct, in like manner as the
Anglo-Saxon, the Teutonic, and Scandinavian races would, in a popular use of the
terms, be considered as distinct races, speaking languages mutually unintelligible.
But the etymologist regards their languages as substantially the same ; and ethno-
graphically these nations belong to one and the same stock.
There are certainly many points, in reference to the ancient history of the Celts,
on which learned men greatly differ, and at which it was impossible that I should
ever glance in the superficial allusions which my limits admitted. But there is no
point on which ethnographers are better agreed, than that the Bretons, Welsh, Irish,
46 HISTORY
This great Celtic race is one of the most remarkable that
has appeared in history. Whether it belongs to that extensive
Indo-European family of nations, which, in ages before the dawn
of history, took up a line of march in two columns from Lower
India, and, moving westward by both a northern and a southern
route, finally diffused itself over Western Asia, Northern Africa,
and the greater part of Europe ; or whether, as others suppose,
the Celtic race belongs to a still older stock, and was itself driven
down upon the South and into the West of Europe by the over-
whelming force of the Indo-Europeans, is a question which we
have no time at present to discuss. However it may be decided,
it would seem that for the first time, as far as we are acquainted
with the fortunes of this interesting race,, they have found
themselves in a really prosperous condition in this country.
Driven from the soil in the West of Europe, to which their
fathers clung for two thousand years, they have at length,
and for the first time in their entire history, found a real home
in a land of strangers. Having been told, in the frightful language
of political economy, that at the daily table which Nature spreads
for the human family there is no cover laid for them in Ireland,
they have crossed the ocean, to find occupation, shelter, and
bread on a foreign but friendly soil.
This " Celtic Exodus," as it has been aptly called, is to all
the parties immediately connected with it one of the most
important events of the day. To the emigrants themselves
it may be regarded as a passing from death to life. It will
benefit Ireland by reducing a surplus population, and restor-
ing a sounder and juster relation of capital and labor. It
will benefit the laboring classes in England, where wages have
been kept down to the starvation point by the struggle between
the native population and the inhabitants of the sister island
for that employment and food of which there is not enough for
and Highland Scotch belong to the Celtic race, representing, no doubt, different
national families, which acquired each its distinctive dialect at a very early period.
Dr. Prichard (the leading authority on questions of this kind), after comparing
the remains of the ancient Celtic language, as far as they can now be traced in
proper names, says, "We must hence conclude that the dialect of the ancient
Gauls was nearly allied to the Welsh, and much more remotely related to the Erse
and Gaelic."- "Researches into the Physical History of Mankind," Vol. Ill,
p. 135. See also Latham's " English Language," p. 74.
COLONIZATION AND IMMIGRATION 47
both. This benefit will extend from England to ourselves, and
will lessen the pressure of the competition which our labor is
obliged to sustain, with the ill-paid labor of Europe. In addition
to all this, the constant influx into America of stout and efficient
hands supplies the greatest want in a new country, which is
that of labor, gives value to land, and facilitates the execution
of every species of private enterprise and public work.
I am not insensible to the temporary inconveniences which
are to be offset against these advantages, on both sides of the
water. Much suffering attends the emigrant there, on his
passage, and after his arrival. It is possible that the value
of our native labor may have been depressed by too sudden
and extensive a supply from abroad; and it is certain that
our asylums and almshouses are crowded with foreign inmates,
and that the resources of public and private benevolence have
been heavily drawn upon. These are considerable evils, but they
have perhaps been exaggerated.
It must be remembered, in the first place, that the immi-
gration daily pouring in from Europe is by no means a pauper
immigration. On the contrary, it is already regarded with
apprehension abroad, as occasioning a great abstraction of
capital. How the case may be in Great Britain and Ireland,
I have seen no precise statement ; but it is asserted, on appar-
ently good grounds, that the consumption and abstraction of
capital caused by immigration from Germany amounts annu-
ally to twenty millions of rix-dollars, or fifteen millions of our
currency.1
No doubt, foreign immigration is attended with an influx
of foreign pauperism. In reference to this, I believe your
system of public relief is better here in New York than ours
in Massachusetts, in which, however, we are making impor-
tant changes. It is said, that, owing to some defect in our
system, or its administration, we support more than our
share of needy foreigners. They are sent in upon us from other
1 In an instructive article relative to the German emigration in Otto Hiibner's
" Jahrbuch fiir Volkswirthschaft und Statistik," the numbers who emigrated from
Germany, from 1846 to 1851 inclusive, are estimated to have amounted to an
annual average of 96,676, and the amount of capital abstracted by them from the
country to an average of 19,370,333 .rix-dollars (about fifteen million Spanish
dollars) per annum.
48 HISTORY
States. New York, as the greatest seaport, must be exposed
also to more than her proportionate share of the burden. How-
ever the evil arises, it may no doubt be mitigated by judicious
legislation ; and in the meantime Massachusetts and New York
might do a worse thing with a portion of their surplus means than
feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give a home to the stranger,
and kindle the spark of reason in the mind of the poor foreign
lunatic, even though that lunatic may have been (as I am
ashamed, for the credit of humanity, to say has happened) set
on shore in the night from a coasting vessel, and found in the
morning in the fields, half dead with cold, and hunger, and fright.
But you say, "They are foreigners." Well, do we owe no
duties to foreigners? What was the founder of Virginia, when
a poor Indian girl threw herself between him and the war-
club of her father, and saved his life at the risk of her own?
What were the Pilgrim Fathers, when the friendly savage, if
we must call him so, met them with his little vocabulary of
kindness, learned among the fishermen on the Grand Bank, -
"Welcome, Englishmen"? "They are foreigners." And suppose
they are ? Was not the country all but ready, a year or two ago,
to plunge into a conflict with the military despotisms of the East
of Europe, in order to redress the wrongs of the oppressed races
who feed their flocks on the slopes of the Carpathians, and pasture
their herds upon the tributaries of the Danube, and do we talk
of the hardship of relieving destitute foreigners, whom the hand
of God has guided across the ocean and conducted to our doors ?
Must we learn a lesson of benevolence from the ancient
heathen? Let us then learn it. The whole theater at Rome
stood up and shouted their sympathetic applause, when the
actor in one of Terence's plays exclaimed, "I am a man ; nothing
that is human is foreign to me."
I am not indifferent to the increase of the public burdens;
but the time has been when I have felt a little proud of the
vast sums paid in the United States for the relief of poor
immigrants from Europe. It is an annual sum, I have no
doubt, equal to the interest on the foreign debt of the States
which have repudiated their obligations. When I was in
London, a few years ago, I received a letter from one of the
interior counties of England, telling me that they had in their
COLONIZATION AND IMMIGRATION 49
house of correction an American seaman, (or a person who
pretended to be,) who from their account seemed to be both
pauper and rogue. They were desirous of being rid of him,
and kindly offered to place him at my disposal. Although
he did not bid fair to be a very valuable acquisition, I wrote
back that he might be sent to London, where, if he was a sailor,
he could be shipped by the American Consul to the United
States, if not, to be disposed of in some other way. I ventured
to add the suggestion, that if her Majesty's Minister at Washing-
ton were applied to in a similar way by the overseers of the poor
and wardens of the prisons in the United States, he would be
pretty busily occupied. But I really felt pleased, at a time when
my own little State of Massachusetts was assisting from ten to
twelve thousand destitute British subjects annually, to be able
to relieve the British empire, on which the sun never sets, of the
only American pauper quartered upon it.
IMMIGRATION — A REVIEW1
HENRY CABOT LODGE, LL.D.
THERE is nothing so dry as statistics, nothing which falls so
dully on the listening ear as the recitation of many figures,
not figures of speech but of enumeration. It is also very difficult
to grasp the important statistics by merely hearing them read,
and yet it is impossible to deal with the question of immigration
without them. To comprehend the subject at all the very first
step is to realize what the number of immigrants to this country
has been, and, further, to trace by the figures the changes which
have occurred in the character and origin of the immigration. I
have here a table which shows the number of immigrants to
this country during the past forty years, that is, since the close
of the Civil War, and I also have tables showing the countries
from which the immigrants come and which reveal the changes
of nationality, or rather the change in the proportion of the
nationalities of which our immigration has been composed. I
will not read to you these long lists of figures because it would
simply be confusing and they can really only be properly studied
in detail when printed, as I hope they may be. I shall confine
myself to an analysis of them by which you will be enabled to
understand what they signify. In the first place, the number
of foreign immigrants to this country during the past forty years
reaches the enormous total of 19,001,195. Since the formation of
the Government, twenty-four millions of people, speaking in
round numbers, have come into the United States as immigrants,
and of that number, still speaking in round numbers, twenty-
two millions have come from Europe. Of the twenty-two mil-
lions from Europe, seven and a half millions were from the
United Kingdom, over four millions of these being from Ireland,
and nearly three millions from England ; over five millions were
from Germany, and nearly a million and a half were from Norway
1 Reprinted from address delivered at Boston City Club, March 20, 1900.
50
IMMIGRATION — A REVIEW 51
and Sweden, two and one half millions each from Austria-
Hungary and Italy, and two millions from Russia, including
Poland.
During the decade 1880-1890 there was for the first time
large immigration from Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Russia.
In the decade 1890-1900 there was a marked reduction in
arrivals from Germany, Ireland, England, Scotland, and Norway
and Sweden, and great increase from Italy, Austria-Hungary,
and Russia.
Immigration from France, never large (average about five
thousand a year), decreased in the decade 1890-1900, but has
since increased.
The first point to be observed here is the size of this huge total
of nineteen millions. It is safe to say that there has never been
in the history of the world such a movement of peoples as these
figures represent. Neither ancient nor modern history discloses
any such migration as this. The great influx of barbarians into
Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, so far as we can
determine from all extant accounts, was small compared to the
immigration to this country within the lifetime of a single gen-
eration. Moreover, the largest movements, numerically speak-
ing, at the time of the dissolution of the Roman Empire, were
flung back by the forcible resistance of the people of Europe,
where Romans and Teutons united to arrest the advance of Huns,
Tartars, and Scythians. These were all, like our own, voluntary
migrations, although, unlike ours, they were armed invaders
instead of peaceful citizens. On the other hand, there is cer-
tainly no record of any forced migration which can compare for
a moment in numbers with the voluntary immigration to this
country. Probably the largest forced immigration which the
world has ever seen was that which brought negroes from Africa
to the two Americas, and yet in all the two centuries or more of
the African slave trade, the total numbers of negroes actually
brought to the Americas would fall far short of the millions who
have come to the United States in the last forty years. Such a
displacement of population, and such a movement of peoples as
this is in itself a historic event of great magnitude deserving the
most careful consideration ; but what we are concerned with is its
effect upon, and its meaning to, the people of the United States
52 HISTORY
and the future of our country. The problem which confronts
us is whether we are going to be able to assimilate this vast body
of people, to indoctrinate them with our ideals of government,
and with our political habits, and also whether we can main-
tain the wages and the standards of living among our working-
men in the presence of such a vast and rapid increase of popu-
lation. In what I am about to say I have no reflections to cast
upon the people of any race or any nationality, and I say this
because it is the practice of the demagogue who neither knows
nor cares anything about the seriousness of this question to en-
deavor to make political capital among voters of foreign birth
by proclaiming that any effort to deal intelligently with the
question is directed against them individually. The question
is just as important to the citizen of foreign birth who took out
his naturalization papers yesterday and thus cast in his lot and
the future hopes of his children with the fortunes of the United
States, as it is to the man whose ancestors settled here two or
three hundred years ago. To all true Americans, no matter what
their race or birthplace, this question is of vast moment in the
presence of such a vast and rapid increase of population. I am
not here to-night to make arguments or appeals, still less to reflect
upon any people or any race either here or elsewhere. I shall
deal simply with the conditions of the problem and the facts of
the case, and leave it to you to draw your own inferences and
determine what in your opinion ought to be done.
The thirteen colonies which asserted their independence and
compelled England after a long war to recognize it, were chiefly
populated by men of the English race, immigrants from England
and from the Lowlands of Scotland. These people were in an
overwhelming majority in all the colonies, and especially in
New England. In New York there were the Dutch who had
founded the colony. They were not very numerous compared
with the entire population of all the colonies and were practically
confined to their original settlement. Of kindred race with the
predominant English they were a strong, vigorous people and
furnished an element of great importance and value in the colonial
population.
In the eighteenth century there was an immigration of Hugue-
not Frenchmen which was scattered all through the various
IMMIGRATION — A REVIEW 53
colonies, and which, although comparatively small in numbers,
was of a most admirable quality. There was also a considerable
immigration of Germans from the Palatinate, and of people from
the North of Ireland known generally as Scotch-Irish. These
Germans and Scotch-Irish settled chiefly in Western Pennsyl-
vania, Virginia, and North Carolina. They were good robust
stocks and added to the strength as well as the number of .the
population. Immigration to the colonies from other sources
than those which I have mentioned was trifling, and, speaking
bfoadly^the thirteen colonies, at the time of the Revolution,
had an overwhelming majority of inhabitants who were English
speaking and who came from Great Britain and Ireland. It
was this population which fought the Revolution and adopted
the Constitution of the United States. Our political institutions
and bur governments, both State and National, were founded
by and for these people, and in accord with their ideals and
their traditions. They were a homogeneous people, and the
institutions which they thus established were essentially their
own, were thoroughly understood by them, and suited them in
every respect. The soundness of our political system has been
demonstrated by more than a hundred years of existence and
by the manner in which it has surmounted great strains and
perils. But the population of the country, in the meantime,
has changed, largely by the processes of immigration, and one
of the great problems, both in the present and in the future, is
to determine whether these political institutions, founded more
than a century ago, can be adapted to, and adopted by, the
population of the United States as it is to-day constituted.
Let me now review very briefly the changes in our immi-
gration. The first great immigration was that from Ireland,
which began in the forties after the Great Famine, and which has
continued, although in diminishing numbers, to the present
time. This Irish immigration came from all parts of the island
and was no longer confined principally to the North as it had
been in the Colonial days. The Irish spoke the same language
as the people of the United States, they had the same traditions
oi ' government and they had for centuries associated and inter-
married with the people of Great Britain. Without dwelling
on their proved value as an element of the population, it is enough
54 HISTORY
to say that they presented no difficulties of assimilation, and
they adopted and sustained our system of government as easily
as the people of the earlier settlement. At a slightly later period
began the great German immigration to the United States,
followed in time by the Scandinavian. There could not be a
better addition to any population than was furnished by both
these people. They spoke, it is true, a different language, but
they were of the same race as the people who had made them-
selves masters of Great Britain, so they assimilated at once
with the people of the United States, for the process was merely
a reblending of kindred stocks. But the German and the Scandi-
navian immigration has diminished of late years, and, relatively
to the other races which have recently begun to come, has di-
minished very greatly. Later than any of these was the immigra-
tion of French Canadians, but which has assumed large propor-
tions and has become a strong and most valuable element of
our population. But the French of Canada scarcely come within
the subject we are considering because they are hardly to be
classed as immigrants in the accepted sense. They represent
one of the oldest settlements on this continent. They have
been, in the broad sense, Americans for generations, and their
coming to the United States is merely a movement of Americans
across an imaginary line from one part of America to another.
Within the last twenty years, however, there has been a great
change in the proportion of the various nationalities immigrating
from Europe to the United States. The immigrants from Great
Britain and Ireland, and from Germany and Scandinavia have
gone down in numbers as compared with immigrants from coun-
tries which, until very recent years, sent no immigrants to
America. We have never received, and do not now receive, any
immigration from Spain, or any considerable immigration from
France and Belgium. The great growth in recent years in our
immigration has been from Italy, from Poland, Hungary, and
Russia, from Eastern Europe, from subjects of the Sultan, and
is now extending to the inhabitants of Asia Minor. With the
exception of the Italians these people have never been amal-
gamated with, or brought in contact with, the English-speaking
people, or with those of France, Germany, Holland, and Scandi-
navia who have built up the United States. I except the Italians
IMMIGRATION — A REVIEW 55
not merely because their noble literature and splendid art are
a part of our inheritance but because they are conspicuously
one of the countries which belong to what is known as Western
civilization. They, like ourselves, are the heirs of the civilization
of Ancient Rome, and until one has traveled in Eastern Europe
and studied the people one does not realize how much this
signifies.
I am not concerned here with whether the civilization of Rome
was better than that of Byzantium, or of the Orient, or of China.
I merely state the fact that the civilization of Rome was a widely
different civilization from the others, and that it was the civiliza-
tion whose ideas we have inherited. In Eastern Europe the people
fell heirs, not to the civilization of Rome, but to that of Byzan-
tium, of the Greeks of the Lower Empire. As an example of
what I mean, the idea of patriotism, that is, of devotion to one's
country, is Roman, while the idea of devotion to the Emperor,
the head of the State, is Byzantine. I point out these differences
merely as conditions of the problem of assimilation which we
have presented to us.
I wish next to call your attention to the manner in which this
question of immigration has been dealt with by the successive
laws passed by Congress. Let me begin by making clear one
point which I think is sometimes overlooked. Every independent
nation has, and must have, an absolute right to determine who
shall come into the country ; and, secondly, who shall become
a part of its citizenship, and on what terms. We cannot, in fact,
conceive of an independent nation which does not possess this
power, for if one nation can compel another to admit its people,
the nation thus compelled is a subject and dependent nation.
The power of the American people to determine who shall come
into this country, and on what terms, is absolute, and by the
American people I mean its citizens at any given moment,
whether native born or naturalized, whose votes control the
Government. I state this explicitly, because there seems to be
a hazy idea in some minds that the inhabitants of other countries
have a right, an inalienable right, to come into the United States.
No one has a right to come into the United States, or become
part of its citizenship, except by permission of the people of the
United States. The power, therefore, of Congress as representing
HISTORY
\ all the people, is absolute, and they can make any laws they deem
wise, from complete prohibition down, in regard to immigration.
" The laws regulating immigration are of two kinds, — restric-
tive and selective. The only restrictive legislation in regard
to immigration into the United States is that which is to be found
in the Chinese Exclusion Acts. All the rest of our immigration
legislation, although it has a somewhat restrictive effect very
often, is purely selective in character. We have determined by
law that the criminal and the diseased, that women imported
for immoral purposes and laborers brought here under contract,
shall be excluded, and we also undertake to exclude what are
known as "assisted immigrants," those whose expenses are paid
for them by others, whether individuals, corporations, or govern-
ments, because it is believed that such immigrants are paupers
and likely to become a public charge. I will give you the figures
which show the results of these provisions of our statutes, and
which are as follows :
IMMIGRANTS DEBARRED
YEARS
PAUPERS
CONTRACT
LABORERS
DISEASED
AND OTHER
CAUSES
TOTAL
7.896
2 OIO
776
1 3
2 7OO
1807 .
1,277
328
12
1, 6l7
1898 ....
2 261
4.17
3^2
•7 O3O
1800 .
2.CQO
74.1
4X8
3,708
IQOO
2 Q74.
8*3
4.3O
424.6
IOOI
2 70S
727
3QI
3 Cl6
1902
IOO3
3>944
5 812
275
I 086
755
i 871
4,974
8 760
1 004.
A 708
I ^OI
I 6(K
7,004
IQO^
7 808
I 164
2 418
1 1 480
1006
7 060
2 314.
•3 O4O
12,432
IOO7
6 866
I 4.34
4764.
I 3 064
50,306
11,196
l6,2I7
77,719
In considering these statistics, it must be remembered that
these laws are largely preventive and that the number of diseased,
pauper, and criminal immigrants actually excluded and deported
are only a very small part of these classes who would come if
there were no such laws, but who never leave Europe for the
United States because these laws exist.
IMMIGRATION — A REVIEW 57
Of the wisdom of all these measures which shut out the undesir-
able immigrants just described, I do not think there is much
question anywhere ; but there is great resistance to their enforce-
ment, especially from interested parties, like steamship com-
panies and large employers, who desire an unlimited supply of
cheap labor. So far as the diseased immigrants go, the laws are
pretty thoroughly enforced, although there is a continual pressure,
for sentimental reasons, to set the law aside and admit the physi-
cally unfit in special cases, which constantly recur. To those
who resist our immigration laws and who strive to make polit-
ical capital by opposing them, as well as to all law-abiding and
liberty-loving Americans, I would, in this connection, point
out some of the results of our still inadequate statutes and of our
inefficient enforcement of those which exist. Within the past
few weeks we have seen a beloved priest devoted to good works
brutally murdered, while in the performance of his sacred func-
tions, by an alien immigrant. We have seen a murderous assault
by an alien immigrant upon the Chief of Police of a great city,
not to avenge any personal wrong, but because he represented
law and order. Every day we read in the newspapers of savage
murders by members of secret societies composed of alien immi-
grants. Can we doubt, in the presence of such horrible facts
as these, the need of stringent laws and rigid enforcement, to
exclude the criminals and the anarchists of foreign countries
from the United States ? The exclusion of criminals is now very
imperfect, and one of the efforts of the Immigration Commission
is to get sufficient information to enable us to make laws on this
all-important point which shall be effective. The laws against
contract labor are constantly evaded, but the immigration act
passed last year provided an annual appropriation of $50,000
which is to be used in the enforcement of the clause excluding
contract laborers, the importance of which cannot be overesti-
mated. The laws against assisted immigrants are also, I am sorry
to say, in a great measure ineffective, owing to the ease of eva-
sion; and here again, we hope, by the investigations of the
Immigration Commission, to secure information which shall
enable us to make decided improvements in this direction.
The question of immigration is emphatically one of a per-
manent character. There can be no finality in our legislation,
58 HISTORY
which must, in the nature of the case, be constantly open to
improvement in its provisions and in administrative arrange-
^ments. There is also a growing and constantly active demand
for more restrictive legislation. This demand rests on two
grounds, both equally important. One is the effect upon the
quality of our citizenship caused by the rapid introduction of
this vast and practically unrestricted immigration, and the other,
the effect of this immigration upon rates of wages and the stand-
v ard of living among our working people. The first ground is
too large and too complex to be discussed in a brief address ; but
the second is so obvious that it is easy to make it understood in
a few words. I have always regarded high wages and high
standards of living for our working people as absolutely necessary
to the success of our form of government, which is a representa-
tive democracy. It is idle to suppose that those rates of wages
can be maintained, and those standards of living be held up to
the point where they ought to be kept, if we throw our labor
market open to countless hordes of cheaper labor from all parts
of the globe. This incompatibility between American standards
of living and unrestricted immigration became apparent to
the great mass of our people in the case of the Chinese, and the
result was the Chinese Exclusion Acts. But what applies to the
Chinese applies equally to all Asiatic labor. We have heard a
great deal lately about Japanese immigration, but it is not a
subject which ought to lead, or which will lead, to any ill-feeling
between the two countries. Japan, now, by Imperial edicts,
excludes workingmen of all nations, except under strict restric-
tions in a few of what are known as Treaty Ports, and she excludes
the Chinese altogether. Japan does not expect, and no nation
can expect, that she should have the right to force her people
on another nation, and there is no more cause for offense in the
desire of our people in the Western States to exclude Japanese
immigrants than there is in the Japanese edicts which now exclude
our working people from Japan. Moreover, the sentiment of
our people is not peculiar to the United States. It is, if anything,
more fervent in British Columbia than in California. The people
of Australia exclude the Chinese just as we do, and it may as
well be frankly stated that the white race will not admit Asiatic
labor to compete with their own in their own countries. Nothing
IMMIGRATION — A REVIEW 59
is more fatal, in this connection, than to make trite economic
arguments and talk about the survival of the fittest. The white
race of Western America, whether in Canada or in the United
States, will not suffer the introduction of Asiatic labor, and as
for the saying "the survival of the fittest," the people who use
that phrase never complete it. The whole statement is "the
survival of the fittest to survive," which is something very dif-
ferent from the survival of what is abstractly the best. If I may
use an illustration employed by Mr. Speaker Reed, I can make
my point clear to your minds. The bull of Bashan is always
spoken of as a singularly noble animal, and the little minnow,
or shiner, which you can see in shallow water anywhere on our
coast, is a much lower form of life : but if you cast the bull of
Bashan and the minnow together into the middle of the Atlantic
Ocean, the bull will drown and the minnow will survive in that
environment. Yet is the bull of Bashan none the less the nobler
animal. In the environment of Chinese labor, our labor could
not long survive as we desire it to exist, and, therefore, by an
overmastering instinct, our people of the West are determined
not to admit Asiatic labor to this country, whether it is Chinese,
Japanese, or Hindoo. I think that by and by our working people
of the Eastern States will begin to question whether they desire
to have Arabs, who I see are planning to come in large numbers,
and other people from Asia Minor and the west of Asia, pour
into this country. I am not here to argue this question, but
merely to call attention to some facts for your consideration,
and this ominous fact which I have just mentioned is one.
Many people believe that we should also go a step further
in our general legislation, and add ignorance to poverty, disease,
and criminality as a valid ground for exclusion. Congress passed
a bill containing a provision of this sort, which was vetoed by
Mr. Cleveland. The same provision has come up again and again,
and has passed the Senate more than once. Those who advocate
it maintain that it excludes in practice, and with few exceptions,
only undesirable immigrants. Here, again, I shall not attempt
to argue the question with you, but will merely point out the
number of persons who would have been excluded since 1896
if the illiterates over fourteen years of age had been thrown out.
During that period, as shown by the table which I shall give,
60 HISTORY
the illiterates who, by their own admission, could neither read
nor write in any language, numbered 1,829,320. The figures
in detail are as follows :
1896 83,196
1897 44,580
1898 44,773
1899 61,468
1900 . . 95,673
1901 120,645
1902 165,105
1903 189,008
1904 172,856
1905 239,091
1906 269,823
1907 343,402
1,829,320
The only thing I desire to say on this point is, that nothing
is more unfounded than the statement that this exclusion is
aimed at any race or any class. It is aimed at no one but the
ignorant, just as the provision in regard to the diseased immi-
grants is aimed only at the diseased ; but it is unquestionably re-
strictive, and it therefore meets with the bitter resistance of
the steamship companies, from whom, directly or indirectly,
come nine tenths of all the agitation and opposition to laws
affecting immigration.
I have tried in all I have said to lay before you the statistics,
the conditions, the facts, and the past results involved in this
great question. As I have already said more than once, I shall
make no argument and draw no conclusion. I leave it to you to
make your own inferences and reach your own decisions. I
say only this, — that to every workingman and to every citi-
zen of the United States, whether native born or naturalized,
to whom the quality of our citizenship and the future of our
country are dear, there is no question before the American people
which can be compared with this in importance ; none to which
they should give such attention or upon which they should seek
to express themselves and to guide their representatives more
explicitly and more earnestly.
HISTORY OF IMMIGRATION
PRESCOTT F. HALL, LL.B., SECRETARY IMMIGRATION LEAGUE,
BOSTON
A. IMMIGRATION PRIOR TO 1820
IN POPULAR discussions of the immigration question it is
often said that all who have come to this continent since its
discovery should be considered equally as immigrants, and that
only the aboriginal inhabitants can be properly called natives.
In a certain sense this is of course true, but in another it is entirely
misleading; for one cannot speak of immigration to a country
until that country has entered upon a career of national existence.
Accordingly a distinction has been made, and with reason, be-
tween those who took part in building the political framework
of the thirteen colonies and of the Federal Union, and those
who have arrived to find the United States Government and
its social and political institutions in working operation. The
former class have been called colonists, the latter are immi-
grants proper. In discussing the immigration question, this
distinction is important; for it does not follow that because,
as against the native Indians, all comers might be considered
as intruders and equally without claim of right, those who have
built up a complicated framework of nationality have no rights
as against others who seek to enjoy the benefits of national life
without having contributed to its creation.
The number of persons in the country at the date of the Revolu-
tionary War is not accurately known. The population of New
England was produced out of an immigration of about 20,000
persons who arrived before 1640, and it overflowed into the
other colonies without receiving any corresponding additions
from them. Franklin stated in 1751 that the population then in
the colonies, amounting to about one million, had been produced
1 "Immigration and its Effects upon the United States." Chapter I. Henry
Holt and Co., New York, 1906.
61
62 HISTORY
from an original immigration of less than 80,000. The first census
of the United States, in 1790, gave the total population as 3,929,-
214; but, as has been pointed out by Professor F. B. Dexter,
this number does not include Vermont or the territory north-
west of the Ohio River, which, he says, would make the total
over 4,000,000. The first records of immigration begin with
the year 1820, and, although the number of immigrants who
arrived in the United States from the close of the Revolutionary
War to 1820 is not certain, it is estimated by good authorities
at 250,000.
It is difficult to ascertain the number of immigrants from the
various countries in the early part of the nineteenth century.
The number from Great Britain increased from 2081 in 1815,
to 34,787 in 1819, after which it diminished to 14,805 in 1824.
In the year 1820, out of a total immigration of 8385, the United
Kingdom furnished 6024. Germany was second, with 968;
France third, with 371 ; and Spain fourth, with 139. The total
immigration from the other parts of North and South America
was 387.
The original settlers of this country were, in the main, of
Teutonic and Keltic stock. In the thirteen original States the
pioneers were practically all British, Irish, Dutch, and German,
with a few French, Portuguese, and Swedes ; and, in this con-
nection, it should be remembered that a large proportion of the
French people is Teutonic in origin. The Germans were Protes-
tants from the Palatinate, and were pretty generally scattered,
having colonized in New York, Western Pennsylvania, Mary-
land, and Virginia. The Swedes settled upon the Delaware
River. The French were Huguenots driven from home by Louis
XIV; and, though not numerous, were a valuable addition to
the colonies. The Irish were descendants of Cromwell's army,
and came from the north of Ireland. All the settlers had been
subjects of nations which entertained a high degree of civiliza-
tion, and were at that time the colonizing and commercial nations
of the world. At a later period, the annexation of Florida and
Louisiana brought in elements of Mediterranean races, so called ;
but, owing to various considerations into which it is not necessary
to enter here, the civilization and customs of the British over-
spread these regions, as well as those colonized originally by the
HISTORY OF IMMIGRATION 63
Dutch and French, and produced a substantial uniformity in
institutions, habits, and traditions throughout the land.
This process of solidification and assimilation of the different
colonies under British influence reached its consummation with
the establishing of the Federal Government. After the birth
of the United States as a separate nation, colonization in the
earlier sense ceased entirely. European nations could no longer
send out their own citizens and form communities directly de-
pendent upon themselves and subject to their own jurisdiction.
The immigration of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
therefore, differs widely in character from the colonization of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
B. IMMIGRATION FROM 1820 TO 1869
With the year 1820 the official history of immigration to the
United States begins ; for it was then that collectors of customs
at our ports were first obliged to record the arrival of passengers
by sea from foreign countries. The record included numbers,
ages, sexes, and occupations. Before 1856 no distinction at all
was made between travelers intending to return and immigrants
intending to remain.
Although still comparatively small, immigration increased
from 8385 in 1820 to 22,633 m I^3I- The first marked rise took
place in 1827 and 1828, following the commercial depression in
England in those and in the previous year. From 1831, with
the exception of the period 1843-1844, numbers continued stead-
ily to advance until they reached totals of 104,565 in 1842,
and 310,004 in 1850. The most striking annual increases were
from 114,371 in 1845 to 154,416 in 1846, and 234,968 in 1847.
These sudden movements of population were chiefly due to hard
times in Europe, and especially in Ireland, a cause which, with
the Revolution of 1848, in Germany, continued to operate until
1854, when a total of 427,853 was reached — a figure not again
attained until nearly twenty years later. With the year 1854
the tide began to beat less fiercely; immigration decreased
steadily until, during the first two years of the Civil War, it was
below 100,000. But in 1863, a gradual increase once more set
in, and in 1869 352,768 persons landed. During the whole of
64 HISTORY
this period the only immigration of importance came from Europe
and from other parts of America. Immigration from Asia,
which began in 1853, consisted in the largest year, 1854, of
13,100 persons.
In 1869 the ethnic composition of immigration commenced
in a marked way to change, and considerations which apply to
the earlier years do not necessarily hold for those from 1870 to
the present time. For this reason the period is made to end with
1869.
C. IMMIGRATION FROM 1870 TO 1905
In this period from 1870 to 1905, immigration increased more
than twofold. In 1870 the total immigration was 387,203 ;
in 1903 it had reached the enormous number of 857,046, and,
in 1905, the still more significant figure of 1,026,499. Directly
after 1870 a time of industrial and commercial depression began,
culminating in the panic of 1873. The barometer of immigra-
tion, always sensitive to such changes in the industrial atmos-
phere, began to fall, though there was no rapid movement
until the panic was well under way. In fact, immigration in-
creased to 459,803 in 1873 ; but it fell in the following year to
313,339 and then steadily diminished to 138,469 in 1878. After
this it very suddenly increased again, and in 1882 it reached
788,992 — the largest immigration of any year except 1903,
1904, and 1905.
A part of this sudden increase in 1882 and the two subsequent
years must be ascribed to the promulgation of the "May Laws"
by Russia, which caused large numbers of Hebrews to emigrate.
Thus, immigration from Russia, exclusive of Poland and Finland,
was nearly four times as great in 1882 as in 1881, and by 1890
was more than seven times as great. But, in addition to these
special causes, there seems to have been a general advance all
along the line of nations. One reason for this may have been the
enactment by Congress of the first general immigration act of
August 3, 1882, and the fear that this might be the forerunner of
further restrictive legislation, a fear which has undoubtedly
operated during the last two or three years.
After 1882 numbers again diminished, making another low
point of 334,203 in 1886. Then an increase took place until the
HISTORY OF IMMIGRATION 65
total reached 579,663 in 1892. In 1893 came the epidemic of
cholera in the East and quarantine regulations at various ports,
followed by a period of commercial depression lasting from 1894
to 1898. As a result of these causes, immigration fell off largely,
touching a minimum of 229,299^1 1898. From that yearitroseby
rapid strides to 648,743 in 1902 ; to 857,046 in 1903 ; to 812,870
in 1904; and to 1,026,499 in 1905.
The total for 1905 was an increase of 26 per cent over that of
1904; 58 per cent over that of 1902; and 349 per cent over
that of 1898. The record for a single day seems to have been
reached on May 7, 1905, when 12,000 immigrants entered New
York inside of twelve hours.
D. SUMMARY
It appears that the total immigration to the United States
from the close of the Revolutionary War to 1905 was not far
from twenty-three millions, a movement of population unprece-
dented in history. This was divided by decades as follows :
1821 to 1830 143,439
1831 to 1840 599,125
1841 to 1850 : 1,713,251
1851 to 1860 „ . . . . 2,598,214
1861 to 1870 2,314,824
1871 to 1880 2,812,101
1881 to 1890 5,246,613
1891 to 1900 3,687,564
1901 to 1905 (five years) 3,833,076
Total, 1821-1905 22,948,297
If the average holds to the end of the present decade, the
number for 1901-1910 will be nearly eight millions of souls, much
the largest contribution on record for the same period. It need
surprise no one, however, if the total for the decade should be
twice as large as this, for the increase in the last few years is
enormous, and the general tendency during the past century
has been toward a steady and rapid growth of the immigration
movement.
Another way of viewing the annual immigration is with refer-
ence to the volume of population into which it flows. This has
66
HISTORY
the advantage of showing how relatively small the annual addi-
tions are, though they are enormous compared with the additions
to the population of other countries. But it has also a disad-
vantage in that it takes account merely of numbers, and does
not reckon with the character of racial composition either of the
annual additions or the people with whom they are to be mixed.
The following table shows the number of immigrants arriving
in each year, from 1839 to 1901, and the number of immigrants
to 10,000 population :
FOREIGN IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES
YEAR ENDING
DECEMBER 31
NUMBER OF
IMMIGRANTS
NUMBER OF
IMMIGRANTS TO
10,000
POPULATION
YEAR ENDING
NUMBER OF
IMMIGRANTS
NUMBER OF
IMMIGRANTS TO
10,000
POPULATION
1839 • -
68,069
41
June 30
1840 . .
84,066
49
1871 . .
321,350
81
1841 . .
80,289
45
1872 . .
404,806
99
1842
104,565
57
1873 • •
459,803
no
Sept. 30
t»
1874 • •
313,339
73
1844 • •
78,615
40
1875 • •
227,498
5i
1845 • •
H4,37i
57
1876 . .
169,986
37
1846 . .
154,416
75
1877 . .
141,857
30
1847 • •
234,968
in
1878 . .
138,469
29
1848 . .
226,527
103
1879 • •
177,826
36
1849 • •
297,024
132
1880 . .
457,257
9i
1850 . .
369,980
134
1881 . .
669,431
128
1851 . .
379>466
158
1882 . .
.788,992
150
1852 . .
371,603
149
1883 . .
603,322
112
i8S3 • •
368,645
i43
1884 . .
5i8,592
94
1854 • .
427,833
162
1885 • •
395,346
70
i855 • •
200,827
73
1886 . .
334,203
58
1856 . .
195,587
69
1887 . .
490,109
85
1857 . .
246,945
85
1888 . .
546,889
9i
1858 . .
119,501
40
1889 . .
444,427
72
1859 . .
118,616
35
1890 . .
455,302
72
1860 . .
150,237
47
1891 . .
560,319
88
1861 . .
89,724
28
1892 . .
579,663
88
1862 . .
89,007
27
1893 • •
439,730
64
1863 . .
J74,524
52
1894 . .
285,631
42
1864 . .
!93,i95
57
1895 • •
258,536
37
1865 . .
247,453
7i
1896 . .
343,267
48
1866 . .
314,9*7
88
1897 . .
230,832
32
1867 . .
310,965
86
1898 . .
229,299
30
June 30
1899 . .
3H,7I5
40
1869 . .
352,768
93
1900 . .
448,572
58
1870 . .
387,203
IOO
1901 . .
487,918
61
HISTORY OF IMMIGRATION 67
It will be noticed that while in such a table it would be natural
for the index numbers to grow smaller as the population grew
larger, in general they are as high during the past twenty years
as during the periods from 1839 to 1846, from 1855 to 1865,
and from 1875 to 1880.
The only times when immigration exceeded one per cent of
the receiving population were the period 1847-1854, the years
1870, 1873, the period 1881-1883, and the years 1903-1905.
E. EMIGRATION
It is unfortunate that no accurate records are available of
emigration from this country. The Immigration Bureau has
repeatedly made recommendations for supplying this defect,
but Congress has not seen fit to act, and consequently the only
figures available are those of the transportation companies,
supplemented by such guesswork conclusions as can be drawn
from the census. The census obviously cannot furnish very accu-
rate data for estimating emigration, because persons who have
been in the country more than once may figure at a certain date in
the census and a year or two later in the immigrant arrivals.
The same facilities for cheap and rapid transit which operate
so powerfully to encourage immigration are available also for
passage in the other direction. Passage from New York to
European ports is from two to ten dollars less than the rate to
this country ; and the number of domestic servants, for example,
taking advantage of these rates to pass a summer or winter
abroad has become so large as to cause comment. In 1903,
eastbound steerage passengers, according to figures obtained
by the Department of Commerce and Labor, numbered 251,500 ;
and for the decade 1891 to 1900, excepting the years 1896 and
1897, for which no figures are available, the number was 1,229,-
909; or a probable total for the decade of 1,529,909. At cer-
tain times the exodus is larger than the influx. *Thus, during
the period from November i to December 8, 1894, the number
of emigrants was 25,544, while immigrant arrivals for the month
of November numbered 12,886.
The hard times of 1893 caused large numbers of Italians to
return home. The total of steerage passengers sailing from New
68 HISTORY
York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, and Mon-
treal in that year was 268,037; in 1894, it was 311,760. The
Italian Commissioner- General of Emigration states that, in
1903, 214,157 Italians went to the United States and 78,233
returned.
Naturally, many of those who return home come again to the
United States when conditions here are more favorable, or they
have spent the money accumulated while in this country. In
1898, 1 8 per cent of immigrants had been in this country before ;
in 1901, 12 per cent; in 1903, 9 per cent; in 1905, 17.1 per cent.
These figures do not, of course, show how often the immigrants
represented have been in the United States ; for although this
information appears to some extent upon the manifests, it is
not tabulated in the official reports. From a personal examina-
tion of the manifests of several thousand Italians at Ellis Island,
New York, the writer can state that large numbers have been
here two, three, four, and in some cases six or more times. In
view of this the inaccuracy of estimates based on the census
becomes even more apparent. Poles, Slovaks, and other mining
laborers are frequent birds of passage ; and in the case of Cana-
dians working in the United States, there is a large exodus of
persons returning home, some in the winter and some in the sum-
mer, according to the nature of their occupation.
II. CAUSES
CAUSES OF EMIGRATION
UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION COMMISSION
THE present movement of population from Europe to the
United States is, with few exceptions, almost entirely attrib-
utable to economic causes. Emigration due to political reasons
and, to a less extent, religious oppression, undoubtedly exists,
but even in countries where these incentives prevail the more
important cause is very largely an economic one. This does
not mean, however, that emigration from Europe is now an
economic necessity. At times in the past, notably during the
famine years in Ireland, actual want forced a choice between
emigration and literal starvation, but the present movement
results in the main from a widespread desire for better economic
conditions rather than from the necessity of escaping intolerable
ones. In other words, the emigrant of to-day comes to the
United States not merely to make a living, but to make a better
living than is possible at home.
With comparatively few exceptions, the emigrant of to-day is
essentially a seller of labor seeking a more favorable market.
To a considerable extent this incentive is accompanied by a
certain spirit of unrest and adventure and a more or less definite
ambition for general social betterment, but primarily the move-
ment is accounted for by the fact that the reward of labor is much
greater in the United States than in Europe.
The desire to escape military service is also a primary cause
of emigration from some countries, but on the whole it is rela-
tively unimportant. It is true, moreover, that some emigrate
to escape punishment for crime, or the stigma which follows
such punishment, while others of the criminal class deliberately
seek supposedly more advantageous fields for criminal activity.
69
7o CAUSES
The emigration of criminals of this class is a natural movement
not altogether peculiar to European countries, and, although
vastly important because dangerous, numerically it affects
but little the tide of European emigration to the United States.
In order that the chief cause of emigration from Europe may
be better understood, the commission has given considerable
attention to economic conditions in the countries visited, with
particular reference to the status of emigrating classes in this
regard. It was impossible for the commissioners personally
to make more than a general survey of this subject, but because
an understanding of the economic situation in the chief immi-
grant-furnishing countries is essential to an intelligent discus-
sion of the immigration question, the results of the commission's
investigation have been supplemented by official data or well-
authenticated material from other sources.
The purely economic condition of the wageworker is generally
very much lower in Europe than in the United States. This is
especially true of the unskilled laborer class from which so great
a proportion of the emigration to the United States is drawn.
Skilled labor also is poorly paid when compared with returns
for like service in the United States, but the opportunity for
continual employment in this field is usually good and the wages
sufficiently high to lessen the incentive to emigration. A large
proportion of the emigration from southern and eastern Europe
may be traced directly to the inability of the peasantry to gain
an adequate livelihood in agricultural pursuits either as laborers
or proprietors. Agricultural labor is paid extremely low wages,
and employment is quite likely to be seasonal rather than con-
tinuous. In cases where peasant proprietorship is possible, the
land holdings are usually so small, the methods of cultivation
so primitive, and the taxes so high, that even in productive years
the struggle for existence is a hard one, while a crop failure
means practical disaster for the small farmer and farm laborer
alike. In agrarian Russia, where the people have not learned to
emigrate, a crop failure results in a famine, while in other sec-
tions of southern and eastern Europe it results in emigration,
usually to the United States. Periods of industrial depression
as well as crop failures stimulate emigration, but the effect of
the former is not so pronounced, for the reason that disturbed
CAUSES OF EMIGRATION 71
financial and industrial conditions in Europe are usually coin-
cidental with like conditions in the United States, and at such
times the emigration movement is always relatively smaller.
The fragmentary nature of available data relative to wages
in many European countries makes a satisfactory comparison
with wages in the United States impossible. It is well known,
however, that even in England, Germany, France, and other
countries of western Europe wages are below the United States
standard, while in southern and eastern Europe the difference
is very great. The commission found this to be true in its investi-
gations in parts of Italy, Austria-Hungary, Greece, Turkey,
Russia, and the Balkan States. In fact, it may safely be stated
that in these countries the average wage of men engaged in
common and agricultural labor is less than 50 cents per day,
while in some sections it is even much lower. It is true that
in some countries agricultural laborers receive from employers
certain concessions in the way of fuel, food, etc., but in cases
of this nature which came to the attention of the commission
the value of the concessions was insufficient to materially affect
the low wage scale.
It is a common but erroneous belief that peasants and artisans
in the European countries from which the new immigrant comes
can live so very cheaply that the low wages have practically as
great a purchasing power as the higher wages in the United
States. The low cost of living among the working people, espe-
cially of southern and eastern Europe, is due to a low standard
of living rather than to the cheapness of food and other commod-
ities. As a matter of fact, meat and other costly articles of food,
which are considered as almost essential to the everyday table
of the American workingman, cannot be afforded among laborers
in like occupations in southern and eastern Europe. The same
is true of the American standard of housing, clothing, and other
things which enter into the cost of living.
Notwithstanding the bad economic conditions surrounding
the classes which furnish so great a part of the emigration from
southern and eastern Europe, the commission believes that a
laudable ambition for better things than they possess rather
than a need for actual necessities is the chief motive behind the
movement to the United States. Knowledge of conditions in
72 CAUSES
America, promulgated through letters from friends or by emi-
grants who have returned for a visit to their native villages,
creates and fosters among the people a desire for improved
conditions which, it is believed, can be attained only through
emigration.
It is the opinion of the commission that, with the exception
of some Russian and Roumanian Hebrews, relatively few Euro-
peans emigrate at the present time because of political or reli-
gious conditions. It is doubtless true that political discontent
still influences the emigration movement from Ireland, but to
a less degree than in earlier years. The survival of the Polish
national spirit undoubtedly is a determining factor in the emi-
gration from Prussia, Russia, and Austria of some of that race,
while dissatisfaction with Russian domination is to a degree
responsible for Finnish emigration. In all probability some
part of the emigration from Turkey in Europe and Turkey in
Asia, as well as from the Balkan States, is also attributable to
political conditions in those countries. There is, of course, a
small movement from nearly every European country of political
idealists who prefer a democracy to a monarchial government,
but these, and in fact all, with the exception of the Hebrew peo-
ples referred to, whose emigration is in part due to political or
religious causes, form a very small portion of the present Euro-
pean emigration to the United States.
Contributory or immediate causes of emigration were given
due consideration by the commission. Chief of these is clearly
the advice and assistance of relatives or friends who have pre-
viously emigrated. Through the medium of letters from those
already in the United States and the visits of former emigrants,
the emigrating classes of Europe are kept constantly if not always
reliably informed as to labor conditions here, and these agencies
are by far the most potent promoters of the present movement
of population.
The commission found ample evidence of this fact in every
country of southern and eastern Europe. Of the two agencies
mentioned, however, letters are by far the more important. In
fact, it is entirely safe to assert that letters to friends at home
from persons who have emigrated have been the immediate
cause of by far the greater part of the remarkable movement
CAUSES OF EMIGRATION 73
from southern and eastern Europe to the United States during
the past twenty-five years. There is hardly a village or com-
munity in southern Italy and Sicily that has not contributed
a portion of its population to swell the tide of emigration to the
United States, and the same is true of large areas of Austria,
Hungary, Greece, Turkey, and the Balkan States. There is
a tendency on the part of emigrants from these countries to retain
an interest in the homeland, and in consequence a great amount
of correspondence passes back and forth. It was frequently
stated to members of the Commission that letters from persons
who have emigrated to America were passed from hand to hand
until most of the emigrants' friends and neighbors were ac-
quainted with the contents. In periods of industrial activity,
as a rule, the letters so circulated contain optimistic references
to wages and opportunities for employment in the United States,
and when comparison in this regard is made with conditions at
home it is inevitable that whole communities should be inoculated
with a desire to emigrate. The reverse is true during seasons of
industrial depression in the United States. At such times intend-
ing emigrants are quickly informed by their friends in the United
States relative to conditions of employment, and a gre^at falling
off in the tide of emigration is the immediate result.
Emigrants who have returned for a visit to their native land
are also great promoters of emigration. This is particularly
true of southern and eastern European emigrants, who as a class
make more or less frequent visits to their old homes. Among
the returning emigrants are always some who have failed to
achieve success in America, and some who through changed
conditions of life and employment return in broken health. It
is but natural that these should have a slightly deterrent effect
on emigration ; but, on the whole, this is relatively unimportant,
for the returning emigrant, as a rule, is one who has succeeded.
In times of industrial inactivity in the United States the large
number of emigrants who return to their native lands of course
serve as a temporary check to emigration, but it is certain that
in the long run such returning emigrants actually promote rather
than retard the movement to the United States.
The importance of the advice of friends as an immediate
cause of emigration from Europe is also indicated by the fact
74
CAUSES
that nearly all European immigrants admitted to the United
States are, according to their own statements, going to join
relatives or friends. The United States immigration law provides
that information upon this point be secured relative to every
alien coming to the United States by water, and the record
shows that in the fiscal years 1908 and 1909, 94.7 per cent of all
European and Syrian immigr^its admitted were destined to
relatives or friends. It is worthy of note that the percentage
was higher in the new immigration than in the old, being 97
per cent in the former and 89.4 per cent in the latter.
The foregoing not only indicates a very general relationship
between admitted immigrants and those who follow, but it sug-
gests forcibly that emigration from Europe proceeds according
to "well-defined individual plans rather than in a haphazard way.
Actual contracts involving promises of employment between
employers in the United States and laborers in Europe are not
responsible for any very considerable part of the present emi-
gration movement. It will be understood, however, that this
statement refers only to cases where actual bona fide contracts
between employers and laborers exist rather than to so-called con-
tract labor cases as defined in the sweeping terms of the United
States immigration law, which classifies as such all persons
. . . who have been induced or solicited to migrate to this country by
offers or promises of employment or in consequence of agreements,
oral, written, or printed, express or implied, to perform labor in this
country of any kind, skilled or unskilled.
Under a strict interpretation of the law above quoted, it would
seem that in order to escape being classified as contract laborers
immigrants coming to the United States must be entirely with-
out assurance that employment will be available here. Indeed,
it is certain that European immigrants, and particularly those
from southern and eastern Europe, are, under a literal construc-
tion of the law, for the most part contract laborers, for it is
unlikely that many emigrants embark for the United States
without a pretty definite knowledge of where they will go and
what they will do if admitted.
It should not be understood, however, that the commission
believes that contract labor in its more serious form does not
CAUSES OF EMIGRATION 75
exist. Undoubtedly many immigrants come to the United
States from southern and eastern Europe as the result of definite
if not open agreements with employers of labor here, but, as
previously stated, actual and direct contract labor agreements
cannot be considered as the direct or immediate cause of any
considerable proportion of the European emigration movement
to the United States. As before stated emigrants as a rule are
practically assured that employment awaits them in America
before they leave their homes for ports of embarkation, and
doubtless in a majority of cases they know just where and what
the employment will be. This is another result of letters from
former emigrants in the United States. In fact it may be said
that immigrants, or at least newly arrived immigrants, are
substantially the agencies which keep the American labor market
supplied with unskilled laborers from Europe. Some of them
operate consciously and on a large scale, but as a rule each immi-
grant simply informs his nearest friends that employment can
be had and advises them to come. It is these personal appeals
which, more than all other agencies, promote and regulate the
tide of European emigration to America.
Moreover, the immigrant in the United States in a large
measure assists, as well as advises, his friends in the Old World
to emigrate. It is difficult, and in many cases impossible, for
the southern and eastern European to save a sufficient amount
of money to purchase a steerage ticket to the United States.
No matter how strong the desire to emigrate may be, its ac-
complishment on the part of the ordinary laborer, dependent
upon his own resources, can be realized only after a long
struggle. To immigrants in the United States, however, the
price of steerage transportation to or from Europe is relatively /
a small matter, and by giving or advancing the necessary money /
they make possible the emigration of many. It is impossible /
to estimate with any degree of accuracy what proportion of the /
large amount of money annually sent abroad by immigrants /
is sent for the purpose of assisting relatives or friends to;
emigrate, but it is certain that the aggregate is large. The/
immediate families of immigrants are the largest beneficiaries m
this regard, but the assistance referred to is extended to manf
others.
76 CAUSES
Next to the advice and assistance of friends and relatives
who have already emigrated, the propaganda conducted by
steamship ticket agents is undoubtedly the most important imme-
diate cause of emigration from Europe to the United States.
This propaganda flourishes in every emigrant-furnishing country
of Europe, notwithstanding the fact that the promotion of emi-
gration is forbidden by the laws of many such countries as well
as by the United States immigration law.
It is, of course, difficult if not impossible to secure a really
effective enforcement of this provision of the United States law,
but undoubtedly it does supplement the emigration laws of
various European countries in compelling steamship ticket
agents to solicit emigration in a secret manner rather than openly.
It does not appear that steamship companies as a rule openly
or directly violate the United States law, but through local
agents and subagents of such companies it is violated persistently
and continuously. Selling steerage tickets to America is the
sxDle or chief occupation of large numbers of persons in southern
and eastern Europe, and from the observations of the commis-
sion it is clear that these local agents as a rule solicit business
by every possible means and consequently encourage emigration.
No data are available to show even approximately the total
number of such agents and subagents engaged in the steerage
ticket business. One authority stated to the commission that
two of the leading steamship lines had five or six thousand ticket
agents in Galicia alone, and that there was "a great hunt for
emigrants" there. The total number of such agents is undoubt-
edly very large, for the steerage business is vastly important to
all the lines operating passenger ships, and all compete for a share
of it. The great majority of emigrants from southern and eastern
European countries sail under foreign flags, Italian emigrants,
a large proportion of whom sail under the flag of Italy, being
the only conspicuous exception. Many Greek, Russian, and
Austrian emigrants sail on ships of those nations, but the bulk
of the emigrant business originating in eastern and southern
European countries, excepting Italy, is handled by the British,
IGerman, Dutch, French, and Belgian lines. There is at present
Vn agreement among the larger steamship companies which in
I measure regulates the distribution of this traffic and prevents
CAUSES OF EMIGRATION 77
unrestricted competition between the lines, but this does not
affect the vigorous and widespread hunt for steerage passengers
which is carried on throughout the chief emigrant-furnishing
countries.
The commission's inquiry and information from other sources
indicate that the attempted promotion of emigration by steam-
ship ticket agents is carried on to a greater extent in Austria,
Hungary, Greece, and Russia than in other countries. The
Russian law, as elsewhere stated, does not recognize the right
of the people to emigrate permanently, and while the large and
continued movement of population from the Empire to over-seas
countries is proof that the law is to a large degree inoperative,
it nevertheless seems to restrict somewhat the activities of
steamship agents. Moreover, there were at the time of the
commission's visit two Russian steamship lines carrying emi-
grants directly from Libau to the United States, and the Govern-
ment's interest in the success of these lines resulted in a rather
strict surveillance of the agents of foreign companies doing
business in the Empire. Because of this, much of the work of
agents of foreign lines was carried on surreptitiously; in fact,
they were commonly described to the commission as "secret
agents." Emigration from Russia is, or at least is made to appear
to be, a difficult matter, and the work of the secret agents con-
sists not only of selling steamship transportation, but also in
procuring passports, and in smuggling across the frontier emi-
grants who for military or other reasons cannot procure pass-
ports, or who because of their excessive cost elect to leave Russia
without them. This was frequently stated to the commission.
A Russian official at St. Petersburg complained to the com-
mission that Jewish secret agents of British lines had been em-
ployed in Russia to induce Christians, instead of Jews, to emi-
grate. It was learned that some letters had been received by
prospective emigrants containing more information than the
dates of sailing, terms, etc. (as allowed by section 7 of the United
States Immigration Act), and also that on market days in some
places steamship agents would mingle with the people and en-
deavor to incite them to emigrate.
The Hungarian law strictly forbids the promotion of emigra-
tion and the Government has prosecuted violations so vigorously
78 CAUSES
that at the time of the commission's visit the emigration authori-
ties expressed the belief that the practice had been checked. It
was stated to the commission that foreign steamship lines had
constantly acted in contravention of the Hungarian regulations
by employing secret agents to solicit business, or through agents
writing personal letters to prospective emigrants, advising them
how to leave Hungary without the consent of the government.
Letters of this nature were presented to the commission. Some
of them are accompanied by crudely drawn maps indicating the
location of all the Hungarian control stations on the Austrian
border, and the routes of travel by which such stations can be
avoided. The commission was shown the records in hundreds
of cases where the secret agents of foreign steamship companies
had been convicted and fined or imprisoned for violating the
Hungarian law by soliciting emigration. It was reported to
the commission that in one year at Kassa, a Hungarian city
on the Austrian border, eight secret agents of the German lines
were punished for violations of the emigration law.
In Austria, at the time of the commission's visit, there was
comparatively little agitation relative to emigration. Attempts
had been made to enact an emigration law similar to that of
Hungary, but these were not successful. The solicitation of
emigration is forbidden by law, but it appeared that steamship
ticket agents were not subjected to strict regulation, as they are
in Hungary. Government officials and others interested in the
emigration situation expressed the belief that the solicitations
of agents had little effect on the emigration movement, which
was influenced almost entirely by economic conditions. It was
not denied, however, that steamship agents do solicit emigration.
The Italian law strictly forbids the solicitation of emigration
by steamship agents, and complaints relative to violation of
the law were not nearly so numerous as in some countries visited.
Nevertheless there are many persons engaged in the business of
selling steerage tickets in that country, and the commission was
informed that considerable soliciting is done.
The commission found that steamship agents were very active
in Greece and that the highly colored posters and other advertis-
ing matter of the steamship companies were to be found every-
where. According to its population Greece furnishes more
CAUSES OF EMIGRATION 79
emigrants to the United States than any other country, and the
spirit of emigration is so intense among the people that solicita-
tion by steamship companies probably plays relatively a small
part even as a contributory cause of the movement.
ASSISTED EMIGRATION
Emigration from Europe to the United States through public
assistance is so small as to be of little or no importance. It is
probable and easily conceivable that local authorities sometimes
assist in the emigration of public charges and criminals, but such
instances are believed to be rare. As a matter of fact, European
nations look with regret on the emigration of their young and
able-bodied men and women, and the comity of nations would
prevent the deportation of criminals and paupers to a country
whose laws denied admission to such classes, however desirable
their emigration might be. Besides, the assisted emigration to
the United States of the aged or physically or mentally defective
would be sure to result in failure because of the stringent provi-
sions of the United States immigration law. It is well known
that in the earlier days of unrestricted immigration large num-
bers of paupers and other undesirables were assisted to emigrate,
or were practically deported, from the British Isles and other
countries to the United States. Even at the present time, as
shown in the commission's report on the immigration situation
in Canada, there is a large assisted emigration from England
to Canada and other British colonies, but it does not appear
that there is any movement of this nature to the United States.
On the other hand various nations of the Western Hemisphere
make systematic efforts in Europe to induce immigration. The
Canadian government maintains agencies in all the countries
of northern and western Europe where the solicitation of emigra-
tion is permitted, and pays a bonus to thousands of booking
agents for directing emigrants to the dominion. Canada, how-
ever, expends no money in the transportation of emigrants.
Several South American countries, including Brazil and Argen-
tine Republic, also systematically solicit immigration in Europe.
Several American states have attempted to attract immigrants
by the distribution in Europe of literature advertising the
8o CAUSES
attractions of such states. A few States have sent commis-
sioners to various countries for the purpose of inducing immi-
gration, but although some measure of success has attended
such efforts the propaganda has had little effect on the immi-
gration movement as a whole.
EMIGRATION OF CRIMINALS
That former convicts and professional criminals from all
countries come to the United States practically at will cannot
and need not be denied, although it seems probable that in the
popular belief the number is greatly exaggerated. This class
emigrates and is admitted to this country, and, in the opinion
of the commission, the blame cannot equitably be placed else-
where than on the United States. The commission is convinced
that no European government encourages the emigration of
its criminals to this country. Some, it is true, take no measures
to prevent such emigration, especially after criminals have paid
the legal penalties demanded, but others, and particularly Italy,
seek to restrain the departure of former convicts in common
with other classes debarred by the United States immigration
law. The accomplishment of this purpose on the part of Italy
is attempted by specific regulations forbidding the issuance of
passports to intended emigrants who have been convicted of
a felony or other crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude
within the meaning of the United States law. Under the Italian
system local officials furnish the record upon which is determined
the intending emigrant's right to receive a passport, and it is
not denied that some officials at times violate the injunctions
of the Government in this regard, but as a whole the commission
believes the effort is honestly made and in the main successfully
accomplished. The weakness and inefficiency of the system,
however, lie in the fact that passports are not demanded by the
United States as a requisite of admission, and although subjects
of Italy may not leave Italian ports without them, there is
little or nothing to prevent those unprovided from leaving the
country overland without passports or with passports to other
countries and then embarking for the United States from foreign
ports. Thus it is readily seen that the precaution of Italy,
CAUSES OF EMIGRATION 81
however effective, is practically worthless without cooperation
on the* part of the United States.
EXAMINATION OF EMIGRANTS ABROAD
The practice of examining into the physical condition of
emigrants at the time of embarkation is one of long standing
at some European ports. In the earlier days, and in fact until
quite recently, the purpose of the inspection was merely to pro-
tect the health of steerage passengers during the ocean voyage.
The Belgian law of 1843 provided that in case the presence
of infectious disease among passengers was suspected there should
be an examination by a naval surgeon in order to prevent the
embarkation of afflicted persons. The British steerage law of
1848, the enactment of which followed the experiences of 1847
when thousands of emigrants driven from Ireland by the famine
died of ship fever, provided that passengers should be examined
by a physician and those whose condition was likely to endanger
the health of other passengers should not be permitted to pro-
ceed. Similar laws or regulations became general among the
maritime nations and are still in effect.
The situation is also affected somewhat by provisions of the
United States quarantine law, which requires American con-
sular officers to satisfy themselves of the sanitary condition of
ships and passengers sailing for United States ports. The laws
above referred to are intended to prevent the embarkation of
persons afflicted with diseases of a quarantinable nature, and
the only real and effective protection this country has against
the coming of the otherwise physically or mentally defective
is the United States immigration law which, through rejections
and penalties at United States ports, has made the transportation
of diseased emigrants unprofitable to the steamship companies.
This law is responsible for the elaborate system of emigrant
inspection which prevails at ports of embarkation and elsewhere
in Europe at the present time.
A systematic medical inspection of immigrants at United
States ports was first established under the immigration act of
March 3, 1891. Under that law steamship companies were
required to return free of charge excluded aliens, and the number
82 CAUSES
of rejections soon compelled the companies to exercise some
degree of care in the selection of steerage passengers at foreign
ports of embarkation. The necessity of a careful inspection
abroad was increased when in 1897 trachoma was classed as a
" dangerous contagious" disease, within the meaning of the
United States immigration law, and again when the immigra-
tion law of 1903 imposed a fine of $100 upon steamship com-
panies for bringing to a United States port an alien afflicted
with a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease, when the
presence of such disease might have been detected by a compe-
tent medical examination at the foreign port of embarkation.
The immigration law of 1907, at present in force, increased
the causes for which a fine of $100 may be imposed on steamship
companies to include the bringing of idiots, imbeciles, epileptics,
and persons afflicted with tuberculosis whose condition might
have been detected at the foreign port of embarkation.
How to prevent the embarkation at foreign ports of emigrants
who under the immigration law cannot be admitted at United
States ports is a serious problem, in which the welfare of the emi-
grant is the chief consideration. In a purely practical sense,
except for the danger of contagion on shipboard the United
States is not seriously affected by the arrival of diseased persons
at ports of entry, because the law does not permit them to enter
the country.
From a humanitarian standpoint, however, it is obviously of the
greatest importance that emigrants of the classes debarred by law
from entering the United States be not allowed to embark at
foreign ports. This is accomplished in a large measure under the
present system of inspection abroad, for in ordinary years at
least four intending emigrants are turned back by the steamship
companies before leaving a European port to one debarred at
United States ports of arrival.
In view of the importance of the subject the Commission made
careful investigation of examination systems prevailing at the ports
of Amsterdam, Antwerp, Bremen, Cherbourg, Christiania, Copen-
hagen, Fiume, Genoa, Glasgow, Hamburg, Havre, Libau, Liver-
pool, Londonderry, Marseille, Messina, Naples, Palermo, Patras,
Piraeus, Queenstown, Rotterdam, and Southampton, from which
ports practically all emigrants for the United States embark.
CAUSES OF EMIGRATION 83
There is little uniformity in the systems of examination in
force at these ports. At Naples, Palermo, and Messina, under
authority of the United States quarantine law and by agreement
with the Italian Government and the steamship companies, the
medical examination of steerage passengers is made by officers oi
the United States Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service,
who exercise practically absolute control in this regard. These
officers examine for defects contemplated by the United States
immigration law every intended emigrant holding a steerage
ticket and advise the rejection of those whose physical condition
would make their admission to the United States improbable.
While acting unofficially, these officers have the support of both
government and steamship officials, and their suggestions rela-
tive to rejection are always complied with.
The other extreme, so far as United States control is concerned,
exists at Antwerp, where the Belgian Government is unwilling to
yield even partial control of the situation, this attitude being due
in part to a former disagreement incidental to the administration
of the United States quarantine law at that port. At Antwerp
not even American consular officers are permitted to interfere
in the examination of emigrants. Between these extremes there
exists a variety of systems, in which, for the most part, American
consular officials perform more or less important functions, as
outlined in the United States quarantine law previously referred
to. As a practical illustration of the value of examinations at the
various European ports in preventing the embarkation of diseased
or otherwise undesirable emigrants, the Commission, as will
appear later, has made a comparative study showing rejections,
by cause, at United States ports of emigrants from different ports
of Europe.
The examination of intending emigrants, however, is not con-
fined entirely to ports of embarkation, but in several instances is
required when application for steamship ticket is made or before
the emigrant has proceeded to a port of embarkation. The most
conspicuous existence of such preliminary examinations is the
control-station system which the German Government compels
the steamship companies to maintain on the German-Russian
and German-Austrian frontiers. There are thirteen of these
stations on the frontier and one near Berlin. Germany, as a
84 CAUSES
matter of self-protection, requires that all emigrants from eastern
Europe intending to cross German territory to ports of em-
barkation be examined at such stations, and those who do not
comply with the German law governing the emigrant traffic
through the Empire or who obviously would be debarred at
United States ports are rejected. During the year ending June
30, 1907, out of 455,916 intended emigrants inspected 11,814
were turned back at these stations.
In some countries an effort is made to prevent intending
emigrants from leaving home unless it is evident that they will
meet the requirements of examinations at control stations and
ports of embarkation, or of the United ^States immigration law.
This is particularly true of Hungary, where at several points there
is local supervision of the departure of emigrants for seaports.
While this supervision is due largely to Hungary's purpose of
controlling emigration, particularly where emigrants are liable
to military service, the system prevents many from leaving home
who would be rejected at ports of embarkation on account of
disease.
Medical examinations, with a view to determining the admissi-
bility of emigrants under the United States law, are not un-
common in connection with the sale of steamship tickets. The
most conspicuous example of examinations of this nature was
found in Greece, and this resulted from a most forcible illustration
of the rigidity of the United States law. In 1906 the Austro-
Americano Company, which was then new in the emigrant-carry-
ing business, had over 300 emigrants refused admission to the
United States and returned on a single voyage. On arrival at
Trieste these returned emigrants mobbed the steamship com-
pany's office, and the experience resulted in the establishment by
the Austro-Americano Company of a systematic scheme of
examining intended emigrants in Greece. Agents of the company
in that country sent their head physician to study the medical
examination of immigrants at United States ports, and physicians
were provided for the 40 subagencies of the company in different
parts of Greece. Under the system in force in Greece, before
any document is given to an intended emigrant he is examined
by the physician attached to the subagency. If that physician
accepts him he receives a medical certificate, makes a deposit
CAUSES OF EMIGRATION 85
toward the price of his ticket, and space is reserved for him on a
steamer. When he goes to the port of embarkation the emigrant
is examined by the company's head physician and, if accepted,
is permitted to complete his purchase of a ticket.
In Italy it is the policy of the Government to examine the
records of intended emigrants at the time application is made
for a passport, and unless the applicant can comply -with the
Italian and United States laws the passport is refused. But this
refers particularly to the cases of criminals and convicts rather
than to the physically defective, and usually Italian emigrants
are given their first medical examination at ports of embarkation.
During the fiscal year ending June 30, 1907, a total of 13,064
immigrants were rejected at United States ports, and for the
three fiscal years ending June 30, 1909, the total number of
immigrants from all sources rejected was 34,377, or 5304 less
than were turned back at the European ports and control stations
above mentioned in a period of thirteen months.
The large number of rejections at United States ports is not
essentially an unfavorable reflection on the medical examinations
conducted in Europe for the reason that the latter are in the
main confined to the physical condition of emigrants, while at the
United States ports the examination is much broader. But this
is not all, for in addition to the requirements of the United States
law relative to the return of rejected immigrants to ports of
embarkation, European laws, as a rule, require that steamship
companies forward those returned to their homes, or home
countries, which, in many cases, are at a considerable distance
from the ports at which the rejected ones embarked. The Italian
law relative to emigrants returned from foreign ports imposes
even greater burdens on the carriers. Under that law the
returned emigrant is entitled to damages from the carrier if he
can prove that the carrier was aware before his departure from
Italy that he could not be admitted under the law of the country
to which he emigrated. A tribunal known as the arbitration
commission has been established in each province of Italy to
examine cases of this nature, and the emigrant who has been
returned may make a claim before that commission without ex-
pense to himself. In many cases, besides returning the passage
money, the carrier is compelled to pay the returned emigrant for
86 CAUSES
loss of wages incurred by reason of his journey across the sea.
For these reasons the transportation of emigrants who cannot be
admitted to the United States is usually unprofitable, but not-
withstanding this fact some companies are willing to assume
considerable risk for the sake of increasing their steerage business.
In the main, however, the examinations conducted at the various
ports are good and effective, so far as concerns the physical
condition of emigrants; and as a safeguard against the trans-
portation of the diseased, who are certain to be rejected at United
States ports, they are of the greatest importance, a fact which
the commission believes is not always fully realized by students of
the immigration problem in the United States.
In the complete report of the commission upon this subject a
detailed description is given of the inspection of emigrants at
each port considered, but for the purpose of this abstract it is
necessary only to note the real and final authority in determining
rejections at the different ports under consideration for causes
contemplated by the United States immigration law. In some
instances this is difficult on account of apparently divided
authority, but the following summary, it is believed, fairly
represents the situation of each port :
Antwerp: Physician employed by steamship company.
Bremen: Physicians employed by American consul, but paid by
steamship companies.
Cherbourg: Ship's doctor.
Christiania : Physician of the board of health.
Copenhagen : Municipal physician.
Fiume : Physician employed by steamship company, who also acts
for the American consul.
Genoa: Ship's doctor.
Glasgow: Ship's doctor.
Hamburg: Physicians (including eye specialists) employed by
steamship company.
Havre : Physician (including an eye specialist) employed by steam-
ship companies.
Libau : Physician employed by steamship company.
Liverpool : Physicians employed by steamship companies.
Londonderry : Ship's doctor.
Marseille: Physicians (including an eye specialist) employed by
steamship company, and the ship's doctor.
CAUSES OF EMIGRATION 87
Messina: Acting assistant surgeon of the United States Public
Health and Marine-Hospital Service.
Naples: Officers of the United States Public Health and Marine-
Hospital Service.
Palermo: Acting assistant surgeon of the United States Public
Health and Marine-Hospital Service.
Pair as : Physicians employed by steamship companies.
Pirczus : Ship's doctor.
Queenstown : Ship's doctor.
Rotterdam: Physicians (including eye specialists) employed by the
steamship company, a physician employed by the American con-
sulate general, and the ship's doctor.
Southampton : Ship's doctor.
Trieste: Physicians employed by steamship company, the ship's
doctor, and police officers. The American consul exercises unusual
authority.
From the foregoing it is clear that the steamship companies
are in the main responsible for the medical examination of emi-
grants at European ports of embarkation, and they are the chief
beneficiaries of the system. A study of the situation also shows
that the real controlling factor in the situation at every port is the
United States immigration law, for without it there would be no
examination worthy of the name.
Methods of conducting the inspection differ at the various
ports. At some the examination, as a rule, extends over several
days, and specialists are employed to detect trachoma, which
disease is the chief factor in making a competent examination
necessary. At others, and particularly at some ports of call, the
inspection is conducted hurriedly and under seemingly un-
favorable circumstances. In some instances American officials
have absolutely no part in the work and exercise no authority ;
in others American consuls participate actively ; and in the case
of some of the Italian ports American medical officers absolutely
control the situation.
Because of the absence of records the commission was unable to
ascertain for any stated period the total number of rejections
made at all European ports included in the inquiry. In the case
of some ports information was not available for all of the steam-
ship lines embarking emigrants there, and in other cases the
number of persons rejected was found, but the cause of rejections
88 CAUSES
could not be ascertained. Consequently the material at hand is
incomplete, but it is sufficient to illustrate the great sifting process
that goes on at control stations and ports before emigrants are
finally allowed to embark for the United States.
As previously explained, it is impossible to state the exact
number of intended emigrants who are refused passage to the
United States from European ports during any given period.
From the records available it may be seen that of the ports in-
cluded within the commission's inquiry no data relative to rejec-
tions were available for Antwerp, Cherbourg, Chris tiania, Copen-
hagen, Londonderry, Marseille, Piraeus, and Southampton, while
for Genoa, Liverpool, Libau, and Patras the record is incomplete.
This is particularly unfortunate in the case of Liverpool, which is
one of the four great emigration ports of Europe. Moreover,
the inquiry did not include the minor ports of Barcelona, Bor-
deaux, Boulogne, Cadiz, Calais, Dover, Gibraltar, Hull, Leghorn,
Plymouth, and Stettin, at all of which some emigrants embarked
for the United States during the year 1907. No data whatever
could be secured relative to the number of applicants who, on
account of their physical condition, were refused transportation
by agents of the various lines requiring a medical examination in
connection with the sale of tickets. It is believed, however, that
the number rejected in this way is relatively small.
From the foregoing it is clear that while the number of rejec-
tions, 39,681, shown in the preceding table in all probability
represents the greater part of all rejections at ports of em-
barkation and elsewhere in Europe, the number would be con-
siderably increased were complete data available. Of course
any estimate of the total number rejected would of necessity be
largely speculative, but it seems safe to assume that during the
period of the thirteen months — December i, 1906, to December
31, 1907 — covered by the commission's inquiry at least 50,000
intended emigrants were refused transportation from European
ports to the United States because of the probability that they
would be debarred at United States ports under the provision of
the immigration law.
It is worthy of note that practically all of the rejections under
discussion were for some physical or mental disability. This is,
perhaps, only natural, in view of the fact that the inspection at
CAUSES OF EMIGRATION 89
practically every port is conducted purely from a medical stand-
point. In much of the data secured by the commission the
causes of rejection were not given in great detail, the classification
"other causes" including a considerable proportion of the rejec-
tions at several ports. So far as shown by the data, however, all
of the rejections under consideration were for physical or mental
causes except in the following instances : Liverpool, 4 "arrested " ;
Trieste, 2 "without means," 117 "rejected by police"; Queens-
town, i "refused examination."
It does not appear, however, that the police inspection at
Trieste is an attempt to prevent embarkation of persons likely
to be excluded from the United States, and consequently it can
hardly be considered as a means of protecting the United States
against the coming of undesirable classes.
It is, of course, possible that among emigrants rejected for
"other causes" there may be some criminals, prostitutes, pro-
curers, paupers, contract laborers, or other classes specifically
debarred by the United States immigration law ; but, if so, the
number is too small to be worthy of consideration.
At the German control stations on the Russian and Austrian
boundaries the amount of money possessed by intended emigrants
is taken into consideration, and according to the records 755
persons were rejected there during the year 1907 for "want of
means."
On the whole, however, the examination abroad as conducted
at the time of the commission's visit and at the present time
affords practically no protection from any of the classes debarred
by the United States law except the physically or mentally
defective, and this notwithstanding the fact that at several
ports American consular officers actively participate in the
inspection and are accorded the privilege of rejecting emigrants
who are undesirable within the meaning of the United States
immigration law.
The system of emigrant inspection in force at Naples, Messina,
and Palermo is of particular interest because of the somewhat
prevalent belief that an examination by United States officers
at ports of embarkation would prevent the sailing of persons
who could not be admitted to the United States under the
provisions of the immigration law. In his annual report for the
90 CAUSES
fiscal year 1900 Honorable T. V. Powderly, Commissioner-General
of Immigration, reiterated a recommendation that had been
made in the two preceding reports of the bureau, as follows :
That physicians representing the government be stationed at the
foreign ports of embarkation for the purpose of examining into the
physical condition of aliens who are about to embark for the United
States. Experience of the ability and energy of the surgeons of the
United States Marine-Hospital Service leaves no room for doubt that,
should they be assigned to such duty, but few cases of this dangerous
disease would be permitted to embark, and that, besides accomplish-
ing the most important object of preventing the introduction of tra-
choma (or other contagious diseases of the non-quarantinable class),
the delay and trouble and uncertainty incident to examination at the
ports of the United States, where limited accommodations and an
ever increasing and continuous flow of arrivals necessitates a degree
of expedition not always consistent with thoroughness, would be
avoided.
The late Frank P. Sargent, for many years Commissioner-
General of Immigration, was an advocate of this policy, and in
annual reports of the bureau repeatedly urged that it be adopted.
In 1906 Commissioner- General Sargent, in referring to the exam-
ination of immigrants, said :
The ideal plan for controlling this situation, however, is the one that
has been urged by the bureau for years, i.e., the stationing of United
States medical officers abroad, with the requirement that all prospec-
tive passengers shall be examined and passed by them as physically
and mentally fit for landing in this country. This would prevent the
emigration not only of those afflicted with contagious disease, but also
of those afflicted with idiocy and insanity.
Fortunately the plan so long and urgently advocated by Messrs.
Powderly and Sargent has been in operation at Italian ports long
enough to demonstrate its usefulness and to make possible a
comparison of results between the inspection as conducted there
and at other European ports.
Since the only purpose of the medical inspection of emigrants
at European ports of embarkation as here considered is to avoid
rejections and penalities at United States ports, the only fair
and adequate test of the efficiency of such examinations is the
record of rejections by the United States Immigration Service.
CAUSES OF EMIGRATION V 91
In order to apply this test, the commission secured from
published records of the Bureau of Immigration and Naturali;
tion data showing the number of alien immigrants arriving
United States ports from the various ports of Europe and th
number of such arrivals who were refused admission to th<
United States for purely medical reasons. Tru's record covers (
six months of the year 1907, when the method of conducting
medical examinations at the various European ports was as
previously described. Thus the results are perfectly comparable.
In the first place, it is of interest to note that the number de-
barred is remarkably small when compared with the total number
carried. This alone clearly illustrates the fact that as a whole the
medical inspection of emigrants prior to embarkation at European
ports is thoroughly effective. Only 0.36 per cent of the persons
carried were debarred at United States ports for medical reasons,
which is a much smaller proportion than were rejected at Italian
ports and German control stations for the same causes.
For the purpose of this study, however, figures would be
chiefly interesting as illustrating the relative effectiveness of the
examination at the various European ports under consideration.
In the beginning it may be well to state that the class of emigrants
carried from the various ports may and doubtless does affect the
situation somewhat. For instance, practically all emigrants
from Chris tiania are Scandinavians, and trachoma and favus,
which are the principal causes of medical rejection at United
States ports, do not prevail in Scandinavian countries. Every
other port, however, is to a greater or less extent affected by one
or both of these diseases. Copenhagen is perhaps only slightly
affected, through emigration from Finland where trachoma is
prevalent, and Glasgow, because relatively few continental
emigrants sail from that port. Trachoma is not unknown in
Ireland, but it does not exist to such an extent as in southern and
eastern Europe, and consequently Queens town and Londonderry
cannot perhaps be fairly classified with other ports with regard
to the particular kinds of loathsome, contagious diseases which
cause the rejection of so many aliens at United States ports.
Liverpool, Southampton, and the continental ports, with the
exception of Christiania and Copenhagen, all draw the greater
part of their emigrant traffic from southern and eastern Europe,
92 CAUSES
and while, of course, the degree to which the diseases under
consideration prevail differs in various sections, nevertheless
such diseases are sufficiently widespread to require a careful
.'medical inspection of emigrants coming from those sections. Be-
cause of this fact the results of the inspections at these ports
are fairly comparable, which makes possible a reasonable test
of the relative effectiveness of the different inspections.
It will be noted from the preceding table that the percentage
of rejections was smallest among emigrants embarking at Cher-
bourg, only 3 rejections out of 2016 emigrants carried being
recorded. This result is particularly noteworthy because Cher-
bourg draws emigrant traffic from the Levantine countries where
trachoma and favus are widespread, as well as from other southern
and eastern European countries. Moreover, it is only a port of
call and no elaborate system of medical inspection prevails there,
the ship's doctor being the determining factor in the matter of
rejections.
The largest percentage of rejections occurs among emigrants
embarking at Marseille, which is not surprising because of the
fact that steerage passengers sailing from that port are largely
drawn from Syria and countries of southern Europe where
trachoma is particularly prevalent.
A rather curious situation is found in comparing rejections
among emigrants from the four ports of Antwerp, Bremen, Ham-
burg, and Rotterdam. The steerage business of these four
ports is very largely recruited in eastern Europe, and the class of
emigrants embarking is much the same at each port. It is true
also that the great majority of all emigrants embarking at the
German ports, and a large part of those sailing from Antwerp
and Rotterdam, are subjected to an inspection at the German
control stations. Notwithstanding these facts, however, there
is a wide difference in the proportion of persons embarking at
the four ports who are debarred at United States ports for medical
causes. These proportions are as follows :
Bremen 110165 Hamburg 110312
Rotterdam i to 279 Antwerp i to 565
It is necessary to note in this connection that the thAe ports
having the largest proportions rejected have excellent emigrant
CAUSES OF EMIGRATION 93
stations, superior facilities for handling emigrants, and elaborate
and apparently thorough systems of inspection. At Bremen,
which port makes by far the worst showing in the matter of
debarments at United States ports, it will be remembered hat
the determining factor in the matter of rejections is a physician
in the employ of the American consulate, while at Antwerp,
which shows relatively a very small proportion of emigrants
rejected at United States ports, American consular or other
officials have absolutely no part in the inspection.
Most interesting of all, however, is a - comparison between
Antwerp and Naples, for it will be recalled that the emigrant-
inspection systems in force at these ports represent extremes, so
far as American control is concerned, the inspection at Naples1
being entirely in the hands of the United States Public Health
and Marine-Hospital surgeons. Measured by debarments at \
United States ports, however, the inspection at Antwerp is \
considerably more effective, for while the proportion refused
admission to the United States is only i to 565 among emigrants
embarking at that port, the proportion among emigrants sailing
from Naples is i to 305. In the case of other Italian ports where
American medical officers were in charge the proportion of
emigrants debarred at the United States ports is as follows :
Palermo, i to 215 ; Messina, i to 293 ; and Genoa, where during
the period under consideration the medical inspection was made
by ship's doctors, i to 421. It may be said, however, that the
particular diseases for which emigrants are debarred at United
States ports are not so prevalent among classes embarking at
Genoa as at the more southern ports of Italy.
A comparison between the Adriatic ports of Trieste and Fiume
is interesting. At the latter port the medical inspection is made
by a steamship company doctor and a physician employed by
the American consul, but the Commission was informed that
the examination by the former was so rigid that it had not been
necessary for the consulate physician to reject any emigrants for
some time previously. The American consul attends the examina-
tions, but does not exercise unusual authority. At Trieste the
medical inspection is made by resident physicians of the steamship
company and the ship's doctor, while the American consul, at the
time under consideration, exercised a greater degree of authority
94 / CAUSES
than /was exercised by such consular officers at any other Euro-
pean/port. The consul informed the commission that he insisted
on rejections not only for trachoma and favus, but for less con-
spiouous physical defects as well. Experience at United States
porp with emigrants from Fiume and Trieste indicates that,
notwithstanding the great degree of authority exercised by the
consul at the latter port, the inspection at Fiume is much more
effective. In fact, the proportion debarred at United States ports
ai/nong emigrants from Fiume is only i to 597, while the pro-
>rtion debarred among emigrants sailing from Trieste is i to
, 1 8 . The proportion debarred among emigrants embarking at the
rreek ports of Patras and Piraeus is large, being i to 175 in the
ise of the former, and i to 163 in the case of the latter.
III. CHARACTERISTICS
A. EMIGRATION FROM NORTHWESTERN
EUROPE
\
EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM
STANLEY C. JOHNSON
PRELIMINARY SURVEY (1763-1815)
BY THE Treaty of Peace, which was signed at Paris on
February loth, 1763, Great Britain gained possession
of the whole of North America situated east of the Mississippi
River, with the exception of the town of New Orleans and the
neighboring district. She thus retained the original thirteen
states, and added to her dominions the territory of Canada with
all its dependencies, and the island of Cape Breton.
For some few years prior to these diplomatic arrangements,
the original British Colonies had been welcoming a steady inflow
of immigrants from the Mother Country, and, as these maritime
states suffered little or no change of administration following
on the terms of peace, the human stream continued to find its
way into them unaffected by the redistribution of political power
between France and England. No authoritative data concern-
ing the statistics of this migratory movement were preserved
or even collected, but it is safe to say that its strength was by
no means insignificant. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine l
'of 1774 gave figures to show that in the five years 1769-1774 no
less than 43,720 people sailed from the five Irish ports of Lon-
donderry, Belfast, Newry, Larne, and Portrush to various settle-
ments on the Atlantic seaboard. These points of departure
were thus responsible for an annual outgoing of at least 8740
1 Op. cit., p. 332, Vol. XLIV.
95
96 CHARACTERISTICS
souls. Scotland was contributing even more,1 at this time, to
the /exodus than was Ireland, whilst England was also furnishing
colonists, but to a lesser degree. From these facts it seems fair
to assume that the home emigration to the English states across
the Atlantic resulted in a displacement of quite twenty thousand
souls per annum.
The majority of the settlers within this area were drawn
from the Highlands of Scotland and from Ireland generally.
The Scots Magazine for the years 1771-1775 contains a number
oi references to the emigration of these early times.
We are informed [runs one paragraph],2 that upwards of five hun-
dred souls from Islay and the adjacent islands prepare to migrate
next summer to America under the conduct of a gentleman of wealth
and merit whose predecessors resided in Islay for many centuries
past, and that there is a large colony of the most wealthy and sub-
stantial people in Sky making ready to follow the example of the
Argathelians'in going to the fertile and cheap lands on the other side
of the Atlantic Ocean.
Another quotation 3 says :
In the beginning of June, 1772, about forty-eight families of poor
people from Sutherland arrived at Edinburgh on their way to Greenock
in order to imbark 4 for North America. Since that time, we have
heard of two other companies, one of a hundred, another of ninety,
being on their journey with the same intention. The cause of this
emigration they assign to be want of the means of livelihood at home
through the opulent grasiers ingrossing the farms and turning them
into pasture.
Perhaps a still more interesting quotation is the following : 5
In the beginning of September, the Lord Advocate represented to
the commissioners of the customs, the impropriety of clearing out
any vessels from Scotland with emigrants for America : in consequence
of which, orders were sent to the several custom-houses injoining 8
them to grant no clearances to any ship for America which had more
than the common complement of hands on board.
1 Vide Annual Register, Scots Magazine, Gentleman's Magazine, etc., of a con-
temporary date.
2 Vol. XXXIII, p. 325, year 1 771.
8 Vol. XXXIV, p. 395, year 1772.
4 The original spelling is preserved.
6 Scots Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, 1775, P- 523. 6 Original spelling.
EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM 97
Summarizing the substance of these and other passages of a
contemporary date, we may state that, between 1763 and 1775,
emigration to the old British Colonies in North America was
regularly and constantly practiced, that those who joined in
the exodus were sometimes in possession of considerable sums of
money,1 that changes in agricultural economy were usually the
cause of the unrest, and that the local authorities feared, but
with little reason, that the outward streams might eventually
depopulate the country.
When Canada and its dependencies were placed under British
rule, it became an obvious advantage for a proportion of our
colonists to settle within this newly acquired territory. We
find, therefore, that the Royal proclamation of 1763 authorized
the free granting of land, within this area, to officers and soldiers
who had served in the war ; it also encouraged British settlers,
generally, by providing a General Assembly.
The first to take up military settlements were the Frasers
and Montgomeries, who chose Murray Bay as the site of their
new homes; this they did in 1763. Farming was their chief
occupation, but in 1775 they formed the first battalion of the
Royal Highland Emigrants. Speaking of this regiment, the
Scots Magazine for 1775 2 said :
A ship sailed lately from Greenock for America with shoes, stock-
ings, plaids, belts, etc., for a regiment of emigrants now raising by
Government in America to be called the Royal Highland Emigrants.
Mr. Murdoch Maclean of Edinburgh is appointed captain in them.
Quickly following on the settlement of the Frasers and Mont-
gomeries was that of a* party of British colonists who had pre-
viously made their home in the New England states; they
encamped at Maugerville, on the banks of the St. John River.3 A
third group of colonists came from Belfast and Londonderry,
where they had been engaged in the wool trade. In 1767, the
whole of Prince Edward Island was allotted to sixty-seven
proprietors, chiefly Scotch, on condition that they should settle
European Protestants or British Americans on their domains,
1 " People sailed from Maryburgh and took at least £6000 with them." —
Scots Magazine, Vol. XXXV, p. 557. 2 Vol. XXXVII, p. 690.
3 J. D. Rogers, "Historical Geography of the British Colonies" (Lucas), Vol. V,
part 3, p. 81.
98 CHARACTERISTICS
a condition which they fulfilled by stocking the land exclusively
with Highlanders, most of whom were of Roman Catholic faith,
and with Dumfries men.1 In 1772-1774, a number of Yorkshire
Methodists settled at Sackville, New Brunswick, and Amherst,
Nova Scotia.2 Many other records of colonization in Canada
may be mentioned, but it has been shown, with sufficient insist-
ence, that the inflow from England, Ireland, and especially
Scotland, during this period, was of an important nature.
Though Canada had received great numbers of emigrants
from the United Kingdom, th,ese were few in comparison with
the crowds of men and women who entered this territory after
the war broke out. The extent of this complex movement is but
imperfectly understood. It is known, however, that the Loyalist
migration into British territory flowed in two great streams, one
by sea to Nova Scotia and the other overland to Canada. In
this second stream were many Highland families which had only
recently settled in the Colony of New York — Macdonells,
Chisholms, Grants, Camerons, M'Intyres and Fergusons. Promi-
nent among these Highland families were the Macdonells, who
were Roman Catholics from Glengarry in Inverness. In 1773,
they had settled in the Mohawk Valley, but, when hostilities
began, had flocked to the Loyalist banner; they afterwards
went to Ontario and made their new homes in a country to which
they gave the name of Glengarry.3 This site was probably chosen
because it bordered on the edge of Lower Canada, and so enabled
the Highland Catholics to enter into a bond of religious sympathy
with the adjacent French Catholics.
Treating the movement in greater detail, it may be said that
the Loyalists first entered the provinces of Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick in 1783, and in the following year mustered 28,347
souls. The older settlers of British descent in this area, it may
be mentioned in parenthesis, only totaled fourteen thousand.
Cape Breton Island attracted, roughly, three thousand settlers,
whilst other streams of exiled humanity poured into the peninsula
of Gaspe and the seignory of Sorel. In Upper Canada and the
present province of Ontario, the refugees numbered some thirty
1 J. D. Rogers, "Historical Geography of the British Colonies" (Lucas), Vol. V,
part 3, p. 54.
2 Ibid., p. 57. 3 J. Murray Gibbon, "Scots in Canada," pp. 63-65.
EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM 99
thousand, but it is probable that this estimate includes at least
a small proportion of reemigrated Loyalists from the maritime
provinces, as the total movement was not supposed to exceed
forty thousand in all.1
The Loyalists were drawn from almost all the original states,
but Virginia and New York, their stronghold, provided the main
body ; Connecticut also furnished an important element ; whilst
Pennsylvania sent a slightly lesser number than Connecticut.
From the town of Philadelphia, alone, three thousand people
fled when the British Army withdrew.
As a body, the United Loyalists fared badly in the early years
of their settlement. Some drifted away, many complained of
the long winters, and, had it not been for Government gifts of
land, seed, food, clothing, and money, their plight would have
been disastrous. Later, the more determined ones attained suc-
cess and "made of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia sound and
thriving provinces of the British Empire." 2
The actual settlement of the Loyalists forms in itself an impor-
tant chapter of colonial history, but the welcoming of these refu-
gees from the south to the sparsely populated lands of Canada is
to be remembered most for its effect on succeeding generations
of emigrants. We must remember that, until the arrival of the
Loyalists, most of the lands situated more than a few miles from
the chief waterways were uninhabited, uncultivated, and more
or less forbidding. But the Loyalists went in of sheer necessity
and formed, as it were, the nucleus for later settlers. Thus, it is
not too much to say that they laid the foundation for the west-
ward extension of Canada as we know it to-day.
In 1785, the men of Glengarry, Canada, induced a party of
five hundred Scotch Glengarries to come and join them. In
the Gazette of Quebec, under the date of September 7th, 1785,
their coming was heralded as follows :
Arrived, ship McDonald, Captain Robert Stevenson, from Green-
ock with emigrants, nearly the whole of a parish in the north of
Scotland, who emigranted with their priest (the Reverend Alexander
Macdonell Scotus) and nineteen cabin passengers, together with five
hundred and twenty steerage passengers, to better their case.
1 Cf. Sir Charles Lucas, "History of Canada," 1763-1812, pp. 225-226.
2 Sir Charles Lucas, "History of Canada," 1763-1812, p. 224.
ioo CHARACTERISTICS
The success of these men of Glengarry induced others to follow.
Apparently, Alexander Macdonell conducted a second party
to Canada in the year 1791. In 1793, Captain Alexander M'Leod
took out forty families of M'Leods, M'Guaigs, M'Gillwrays and
M 'In toshes from Glenelg and placed them on land at Kirkhill,
whilst a large party of Camerons from Lochiel, Scotland, settled
in 1799 at Lochiel, Canada.1 Other Highlanders went to Cape
Breton Island, to the Niagara district, and to the shores of Lake Erie.
In 1803, Lord Hobart, Secretary of State for the Colonies,
wrote from Downing Street to Lieutenant-General Hunter,
Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, the following letter : 2
A body of Highlanders, mostly Macdonells, and partly disbanded
soldiers of the Glengarry Fencible Regiment, with their families and
immediate connections, are upon the point of quitting their present
place of abode, with the design of following into Upper Canada some
of their relatives who have already established themselves in that
Province.
The merit and services of the Regiment, in which a proportion of
these people have served, give them strong claims to any mark of
favor and consideration which can consistently be extended to them :
and with the encouragement usually afforded in the Province, they
would no doubt prove as valuable settlers as their connections now
residing in the District of Glengarry of whose industry and general
good conduct very favorable representations have been received here.
Government has been apprised of the situation and disposition
of the families before described by Mr. Macdonell, one of the Ministers
of their Church, and formerly Chaplain to the Glengarry Regiment,
who possesses considerable influence with the whole body.
He has undertaken, in the event of their absolute determination
to carry into execution their plan of departure, to embark with them
and direct their course to Canada.
In case of their arrival within your Government, I am commanded
by'His Majesty to authorize you to grant in the usual manner a tract of
the unappropriated Crown lands in any part of the Province where they
may wish to fix, in the proportion of 1200 acres to Mr. Macdonell, and
two hundred acres to every family he may introduce into the Colony.
The Highlanders in question arrived in due course, and were
settled close to the lands taken by their kinsmen in 1783 and 1785.
1 J. Murray Gibbon, " Scots in Canada," p. 70.
2 Reprinted in " Scots in Canada," p. 70.
EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM 101
Among the earliest organizers of colonization schemes in the
nineteenth century may be placed Lord Selkirk. This Scotch-
man banded together a number of thrifty farmers of his own race
who had given up their highland territories, and escorted them
to Prince Edward Island, where they were comfortably located
on a settlement vacated by the French. The Government
freely placed tracts of land at their disposal, but proffered no
financial support. What money was necessary came either from
Lord Selkirk or was derived from sales, held in the Old Country,
of the settlers' stock.1
Three vessels were chartered to carry the eight hundred odd
colonists across the Atlantic, and these reached their destination
on the yth, gth, and 2yth of August, 1803. Selkirk took passage
in one of the regular liners, and arrived in the island shortly
after the first party had landed. The following account,2 written
by himself, is interesting in that it gives a capital insight into
the early life of his settlers :
I lost no time in proceeding to the spot, where I found that the
people had already lodged themselves in temporary wigwams, con-
structed after the fashion of the Indians, by setting up a number of
poles in a conical fashion, tied together at top, and covered with
boughs of trees.
The settlers had spread themselves along the shore for the dis-
tance of about half a mile, upon the site of an old French village,
which had been destroyed and abandoned after the capture of the
island by the British forces in 1758. The land, which had formerly
been cleared of wood, was overgrown again with thickets of young
trees, interspersed with grassy glades. I arrived at the place late
in the evening, and it had then a very striking appearance. Each
family had kindled a large fire near their wigwams, and round these
were assembled groups of figures, whose peculiar national dress added
to the singularity of the scene.
Provisions, adequate to the whole demand, were purchased by
an agent; he procured some cattle for beef in distant parts of the
island, and also a large quantity of potatoes, which were brought
by water carriage into the center of the settlement, and each family
received their share within a short distance of their own residence.
1 Edinburgh Review, Vol. VII, pp. 180-190.
2 Observations on the Present State of the Highlands of Scotland, 1805. The
passage has been reprinted recently in "Scots in Canada," p. 51, etc.
102 CHARACTERISTICS
To obviate the terrors which the woods were calculated to inspire,
the settlement was not dispersed, as those of the Americans usually
are, over a large tract of country, but concentrated within a moderate
space. The lots were laid out in such a manner that there were gen-
erally four or five families and sometimes more, who built their houses
in a little knot together ; the distance between the adjacent hamjets
seldom exceeded a mile. Each of them was inhabited by persons
nearly related, who sometimes carried on their work in common, or,
at least, were always at hand to come to each other's assistance.
The settlers had every inducement to vigorous exertion from the
nature of their tenures. They were allowed to purchase in fee simple,
and to a certain extent on credit; from fifty to one hundred acres
were allotted to each family at a very moderate price, but none was
given gratuitously. To accommodate those who had no superfluity
of capital, they were not required to pay the price in full till the third
or fourth year of their possession.
Selkirk remained in the colony for a month, and then set him-
self the task of exploring the inland tracts of Upper Canada.
Twelve months later he returned and made the following report : 1
I found the settlers engaged in securing the harvest which their
industry had procured. They had a small proportion of grain of
various kinds, but potatoes were the principal crop ; these were of
excellent quality and would have been alone sufficient for the entire
support of the settlement. . . . The extent of land in cultivation
at the different hamlets I found to be in the general proportion of
two acres or thereabouts to each able working hand ; in many cases
from three to four. Several boats had also been built, by means of
which a considerable supply of fish had been obtained, and formed
no trifling addition to the stock of provisions. Thus, in little more
than a year, one year from the date of their landing on the island,
had these people made themselves independent of any supply that
did not arise from their own labor.
So great was the success of Selkirk's first attempt at coloniza-
tion that he made plans for a second scheme in 1811. In this
year he leased lands from the Hudson's Bay Company, some
two thousand square miles in extent, and stretching from Mani-
toba to Minnesota. To this colony many shiploads of dispos-
sessed Scotch farmers were sent, but neither he nor his officers
fully appreciated the difficulties which were to confront them.
1 Quoted from "Scots in Canada," pp. 54, 55.
EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM 103
Selkirk did not seem to realize that the establishment of a colony
in the then unknown West was quite a different matter to organ-
izing-an encampment on the accessible shores of Prince Edward
Island. From the very outset, the second expedition proved
disastrous. Not only were the colonists improperly equipped for
carrying on agricultural pursuits in such remote parts, but the
position of their settlement brought them into conflict with the
Northwest traders. The newly acquired farm lands, it must be
explained, lay across the trading routes leading into the interior
and, therefore, constituted a menace to the hunting expeditions
of the half-breeds. As a consequence, these latter determined to
rid the locality of the newcomers, which they did in 1815 by pil-
laging and burning the farms belonging to Selkirk's tenantry.
More than a half of the sufferers, however, took up settle-
ments in other parts of the country, chiefly around St. Thomas
and London in Ontario, but their ultimate fate is uncertain.
Closely following the schemes of Selkirk came that of Colonel
Talbot, a member of the Lieu tenant- Governor's staff in Canada.
From various parts of the United Kingdom, but specially from
Scotland, he collected some two thousand men, women, and
children, probably during the year 1813, and settled them at
Port Talbot on Lake Erie. To this nucleus of settlers he annually
added other emigrants, until in 1823 it was reported that he had
under his control no less than twelve thousand souls. The
financial burden of his undertaking was probably borne jointly
by the British Government and the Canadian Legislature, the
former finding the passage money, and the latter providing the
food supplies. On this matter, however, some uncertainty exists,
but it is recognized that his followers were too poor to provide
for themselves, whilst Colonel Talbot, we know, received pay-
ment for his services. As to the success of the scheme, the Report
says that the people who emigrated were of the poorest descrip-
tion, but, when last heard of, were as independent and contented
a band of yeomanry as any in the world.1
1 The following is interesting in that it is a copy of a leaflet which was handed
to each of Talbot's original settlers :
"On application made to the superintendent of the land granting department
of the district in which he proposes to settle, the colonist will obtain a ticket of
location, for a certain quantity of land ; furnished with this, his first care ought
104 CHARACTERISTICS
Selkirk and Talbot had few contemporary imitators, for
between 1806 and 1815 Napoleon was harassing Europe, and
men found employment in connection with military and transport
operations, not needing for the time, the possibilities which a
colonial life offered them.
The period of 1783-1815 is important, in that it paved the way
for the movement which was to assume such notable proportions
during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Without the
inrush of Loyalist settlers to Canada in the closing years of the
eighteenth century, the map of British North America, to-day,
would probably present a very different aspect. It was these
sturdy men and women who broke down the barriers of forests
and wildernesses which seemed impenetrable, and opened the
course for later settlement. In comparison with the volume of
the present outflow, the emigrants of this early period were, of
course, insignificant in numbers, but they were pioneers and
made history and must be valued accordingly. Their actual
labors, commercial and agricultural, were of no great moment,
for they had many difficulties with which to contend. In Lower
Canada, financial conditions were oppressive : land tenure,
everywhere, bred discontent, whilst discord with the rebel
neighbors of the south proved a constant source of danger.
Major-General T. Bland Strange, in the United Service Maga-
zine, May, 1903, pp. 151-152, writes:
to be to select a proper situation for his house. This should be placed, as near as
may be, to the public road on which his lot abuts, and contiguous, if possible, to
a spring or run of water. Having chosen his spot, he then sets about clearing a
sufficient space to erect his house on, taking care to cut down all the large trees
within the distance of at least 100 feet. The dimensions of the house are generally
20 feet by 1 8 feet, and the timber used in constructing the walls, consisting of the
rough stems of trees cut into those lengths, is not to exceed 2 feet in diameter ; the
height of the roof is commonly about 13 feet, which affords a ground- room and one
overhead ; the house is roofed in with shingles (a sort of wooden tiles) split out of
the oak, chestnut, or pine timber ; a door, windows, and an aperture for the chimney
at one end, are next cut out of the walls, the spaces between the logs being filled
up with split wood, and afterwards plastered both inside and out with clay and
mortar, which renders it perfectly warm. When once the necessary space for the
house is cleared and the logs for the walls collected on the spot, the expense and
labor of the settler in erecting his habitation is a mere trifle ; it being an established
custom among the neighboring settlers to give their assistance in the raising of it ;
and the whole is performed in a few hours. The settler having now a house over
his head commences clearing a sufficient quantity of land to raise the annual supply
of provisions required for his family."
EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM 105
The British effort at military colonization, after the conquest by
Wolfe, proved futile. The Eraser Highlanders were disbanded and
settled at Murray Bay, on the St. Lawrence, but as no Scotch lassies
were provided, they married the lively little French girls, whose creed,
language, and nationality they adopted; the only traces of their
Highland descent are their names and red hair. At the close of the
Peninsular War, individual naval and military officers settled in what
was called Upper Canada, but no systematic effort was made to en-
courage the settlement of the rank and file — quite the contrary,
from that day to this, everything has been done to discourage it.
Under the administration of Mr. Cardwell, the garrisons were with-
drawn from all the Colonies suitable for settlement by white soldiers.
The old Royal Canadian Rifles, composed of Volunteers from various
British regiments, were struck off the Army list, as also the old Cape
Mounted Rifles, and the emigration of officers was checked by a Royal
warrant subjecting them to loss of pension, should they elect to serve
under any Colonial Government. At the close of the Crimean War,
the only soldiers assisted to emigrate, and given grants of land, were
the German Legion whom we settled in South Africa, though they
never fired a shot for us ; some of their descendants probably fought
against us in the late war. Our own British-born soldiers of the
Crimean War and Indian Mutiny were, in many cases, left to die in
the workhouse, as the shorter periods of service then introduced
deprived them of the right of pension. At the close of these wars,
the reductions in our arsenals and dockyards drove large numbers
of mechanics, some of whom were ex-soldiers and sailors, with their
families, to the United States, whose industries, especially of war
material, largely benefited thereby. According to Lord Charles
Beresford something similar is now going on in his constituency
at Woolwich.
The earlier settlement by the Pilgrim Fathers was on independent
lines, assisted in the Southern States, as later in Australia, by the trans-
portation of convicts, sometimes for slight offences, who in many
instances became good citizens.
HISTORICAL SURVEY (1815-1912)
Though emigration from the United Kingdom to North
America had begun on a limited scale in the early part of the
seventeenth century 1 and had grown in volume during the
1 Colonization Circular, 1877, p. 7.
io6 CHARACTERISTICS
eighteenth, no official returns relating to the extent of the exodus
were made until 1815. In this year, the great war, in which
England had for so long been engaged, terminated, and men
turned to emigration as though it were the one panacea for all
social ills.1 In 1815, the outflow to North America stood at 1889
persons; it then grew annually with slight fluctuations until
1852, when the enormous total of 277,134 was reached, an exodus
which is, considering the volume of people from which it was
drawn,2 probably without parallel in the history of any civilized
country. The years 1846 to 1854, inclusive, were remarkable
for their high rate of departures, but, after 1854, a sudden and,
with some fluctuations, a continued shrinkage took place until
in 1 86 1 the numbers dropped to 62,471, the smallest emigration
since 1844. The Crimean War, 1854-1856, and the Indian Mu-
tiny, 1857-1859, which caused an increased demand for young
men in the army and navy, were largely responsible for the
falling off in the returns of this period. Between 1861 and 1869
the exodus took an upward tendency, and, in this latter year,
acute distress at home made the figures rise to 236,892, and they
remained somewhat high until 1873. The middle seventies
proved a period of diminished emigration, but the ebb was
soon followed by a copious flow, for, in the year 1882, the impor-
tant total of 349,014 was reached. Recent times have shown
somewhat high figures; in fact, for every year since 1903, with
the exception of 1908, an exodus to North America of over three
hundred thousand has been returned. In 1910, the outward
stream numbered 499,669, and, in 1911, 464,330 souls.
The above figures require some qualification. The early records
refer almost entirely to men and women of British nationality ;
the later ones speak of the volume of traffic as carried by the
Atlantic transport concerns and so contain an important foreign
element. It is thus misleading to make comparisons without
duly allowing for this change in the composition of the exodus.
A second point to note is that, at the present time, the outward
passengers are largely counterbalanced by the inward passengers,
but, prior to the sixties, the inward passengers were few compared
1 Cf. J. D. Rogers, "Historical Geography of Canada" (Lucas), p. 67.
2 Census of 1851. England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland; population given as
27,309,346
EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM 107
with the outward. Thus, net emigration to-day is found by sub-
tracting the incoming from the outgoing stream, but net emi-
gration until about the year 1860 was the total outflow with
few or no deductions whatever. A third point to note is that the
total population of the three kingdoms has grown considerably
since the year 1815 ; it is thus misleading to compare, say, the
277,134 emigrants of the year 1852 with the 499,669 emigrants
of 1910 without taking into consideration the gross populations
of these two years. Certain statistics which deal with this
matter, state that the proportion of emigration to the population
was 0.84 per cent between 1853 and 1855, but only 0.39 per cent
in the period 1906-1910. Thus the exodus from the Mother
Country was, in reality, more remarkable in the earlier than in
the later period.
Of the 983,227 emigrants who left the United Kingdom for
all destinations, prior to 1840, 499,899, or more than half, went
to British North America; of the remainder, 417,765 went to
the United States, and 58,449 to the Australian Colonies, includ-
ing New Zealand. Since 1834, however, the total annual migra-
tion to the United States has always exceeded that proceeding
to Canada, but it must be mentioned that when British emigrants
as distinct from all emigrants from Britain are considered, it
will be found that, on two occasions since 1880, Canada has
welcomed more men and women than the United States. This
happened in the last two years of the period, 1910 and 1911.
The history of emigration in the nineteenth and twentieth
century may be traced from the Government reports and papers
which have, from time to time, been published. The first of these
documents, which was devoted solely to a consideration of the
present subject, was the report of the Select Committee which
sat in 1826 to consider emigration from the United Kingdom.
From this report we learn that the Government first gave its
serious attention to the matter in 1820. In that and the following
years many debates were held in both Houses of Parliament
to discuss its value as a remedy for the social distress which then
existed in the home country.1 As a result of these debates, the
select committees of 1826 and 1827 were appointed.
1 Cf. Hansard, "Parliamentary Debates," Vol. XII, p. 1358 ; Vol. XIV, p. 1360;
Vol. XVI, pp. 142, 227, 475, 653.
io8 CHARACTERISTICS
The Committee of 1826 reported generally on the evidence
placed before it, and stated that there was a greater amount of
laboring population in the United Kingdom than could be
profitably employed, and that the British Colonies afforded a
field where the excess could be disposed of with advantage. The
Committee of 1827 entered further into detail and pointed out
more specifically the nature and extent of the assistance which
it would recommend to be given to emigration from national
resources. The Bishop of Limerick, who appeared before the
earlier body, said :
The evil is pressing and immediate. It calls, therefore, for an
immediate remedy. Take any system of home relief, it must be grad-
ual in its operation : before it can be brought to bear, the present
sufferers will have died off, and others will have supplied their place,
but not without a dreadful course of intermediate horrors. Now,
Emigration is an instantaneous relief, it is what bleeding would be to
an apoplectic patient. The sufferers are at once taken away : and,
be it observed, from a country where they are a nuisance and a pest,
to a country where they will be a benefit and a blessing. Meantime,
so far as displaced tenants are taken away, the landlords, aided by
existing laws, and especially by the Act now about to be passed (Sir
Henry ParnelPs Act), will have it in their power to check the growth
of population, somewhat in the same way as, after removing redundant
blood, a skillful physician will try to prevent the human frame from
generating more than what is requisite for a healthful state.1
The committee called a considerable number of witnesses and
repeatedly put the following question to those giving evidence :
Were the Government to advance an indigent man his passage
money and provide him with a homestead, could he be expected to
repay the loan at the rate of £5 per annum, commencing after his
fifth year of residence ?
Most witnesses replied in the affirmative, with the result
that the committees suggested that the Treasury should advance
a sum of about ten thousand pounds, with which it was proposed
to form a loan fund for emigrants. The essence of this report
is contained in the following extract :
Your Committee cannot but express their opinion that a more
effectual remedy than any temporary palliative is to be found in the
1 Page 142 of first Report.
EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM 109
removal of that excess of labor by which the condition of the whole
laboring classes is deteriorated and degraded. The question of
emigration from Ireland is decided by the population itself, and that
which remains for the Legislature to decide is, whether it shall be
turned to the improvement of the British North American Colonies,
or whether it shall be suffered and encouraged to take that which
will be and is its inevitable course, to deluge Great Britain with pov-
erty and wretchedness and gradually but certainly to equalize the
state of the English and Irish peasantry. Two different rates of wages
and two different conditions of the laboring classes cannot perma-
nently coexist. One of two results appears to be inevitable : the Irish
population must be raised towards the standard of the English or
the English depressed towards that of the Irish. The question whether
an extensive plan of emigration shall or shall not be adopted appears
to your Committee to resolve itself into the simple point whether
the wheat-fed population of Great Britain shall or shall not be sup-
planted by the potato-fed population of Ireland ?
Resulting from the advice contained in this report, a letter
was sent to Colonel Cockburn on January 26th, 1827, from Down-
ing Street, stating that His Majesty's Government required
him to survey three hundred thousand acres of waste land in
Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, and
to make preparation for the reception of about ten thousand
souls. He was to proceed to these places without delay, to confer
with the lieutenant governors of these provinces, to inspect,
personally, the land, and, above all, he was to keep in mind the
advantage to be derived from placing new settlements as near
to inhabited parts of the country as possible. One month's
provisions were actually to be stored at each settlement previous
to the arrival of the emigrants. There was one proviso added
to these plans. All was to be ready, were the assisted people to
proceed, but should their exodus be deferred or abandoned,
Colonel Cockburn was to cancel his arrangements.
The projects were abandoned, and Colonel Cockburn was
called upon to nullify the arrangements on which he had spent
so much labor. The reasons for this change of policy were
threefold. Suitable land could not be found of the requisite
quantities in the provinces mentioned; coin of the realm was
so scarce that it was felt that the emigrants would not be able
to repay their indebtedness with anything but produce, which
no CHARACTERISTICS
the Government could not undertake to accept, and, finally,
there were fears that a man might leave his homestead and jour-
ney into the United States and so shirk his liability.
Although the loan was refused by the Treasury on this occasion,
grants in aid of emigration were made by Parliament in iSig,1
1821, 1823, 1825, and 1827 amounting to £50,000, £68,760,
£15,000, £30,000 and £20,480 respectively. In 1834, an Act
was passed enabling parishes to mortgage their rates and to
spend a sum not exceeding £10 a head on emigration. In the
same year emigration agents were placed at various ports of the
United Kingdom, and from that time until 1878 sums varying
in amount up to £25,000 were voted annually by Parliament
for purposes of promoting the removal of indigent people from
this country. The money, however, was mostly spent on direct-
ing the flow of human beings to Australia.
In 1830, a searching inquiry into the state of the Irish Poor was
undertaken by the House of Commons, and the report,2 which
was subsequently communicated to the House of Lords, said :
Emigration, as a remedial measure, is more applicable to Ireland
than to any other part of the Empire. The main cause which pro-
duces the influx of Irish laborers into Britain is undoubtedly the
higher rate of wages which prevails in one island than in the other.
Emigration from Great Britain, if effectual as a remedy, must tend
to raise the rate of wages in the latter country, and thus to increase
the temptation of the immigration (i.e. into England and Scotland) of
the Irish laborer. Colonization from Ireland, on the contrary, by rais-
ing the rate of wages in the latter country, diminishes this inducement
and lessens the number of Irish laborers in the British market.
From about the year 1830, the views put forward by Mr.
E. G. Wakefield 3 grew in popularity. His efforts were directed
to the discovery of means whereby capital and labor might be
1 Page 327 of the Report on Agricultural Settlements says that the grant of
1819 does not seem to have been spent. There is, however, ample evidence to show
that a sum of £50,000 was spent on the Albany settlers in the year in question.
Of this there is abundant though perhaps not official testimony. .Surely this ex-
penditure is the grant of 1819.
2 Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the state of the Poorer
Classes in Ireland and the best means of improving their condition.
3 Vide "The Art of Colonization."
EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM in
introduced into a colony in such a manner and in such propor-
tions as to lead to its more stable development. He disapproved
not only of the form of emigration which was then in vogue, but
also of the system of making free grants of colonial lands. Land,
he held, should not be given gratuitously, but should be sold
and the proceeds used in conveying other emigrants to the colony.
The basis of all successful colonization, he once wrote,1 lies in
keeping a certain ratio between the amount of alienated land
and the amount of labor available in any colony. If land be
given away lavishly, the ratio immediately breaks down, for
laborers speedily become landowners and capitalists suffer
from an urgent want of labor. When, however, tracts are
sold and the money so obtained is used in conveying further
batches of emigrants to the colony, the ratio holds good, for the
more the sales, the more the labor which can be introduced by
the proceeds of the sales and the more the labor which can find
remunerative employment. Obviously, his system demanded
that the selling price of real property should be carefully adjusted,
from time to time, with the amount of available labor.
The views of Wakefield were carried out in a few of the settle-
ments of the Australian Colonies, and some effect was given to
them by the South Australian Act and the Australian Land Act
of 1842. But Gibbon Wakefield did more than theorize on ques-
tions affecting real property. Before he studied the question of
emigration, people had looked upon life in the colonies as socially
degrading, and having much in common with penal transporta-
tion, but with the spreading of his teachings they grew to consider
it a means whereby individuals might improve their position
as well as a factor which would strengthen the Empire by the
foundation of overseas dominions.2
In 1831, a Government commission on Emigration was formed
and, in the same year, the commissioners reported that from an
annual average of about nine thousand during the first ten years
after the Peace, the inflow to Canada had increased in the five
years ending with 1831 to an annual average of more than twenty
thousand, also that these great multitudes of people had mostly
1 In "The Art of Colonization."
2 Report of the Committee on Agricultural Settlements in British Colonies,
Vol. I, 1906, p. 2.
1 1 2 CHARACTERISTICS
gone out by their own means and disposed of themselves through
their own efforts without any serious or lasting inconvenience.
The commissioners did not propose, therefore, to interfere
by a direct grant of money with a practice which appeared to
thrive so well spontaneously. They recognized, probably, how
vast an outlay would be necessary to carry on the business to a
corresponding extent through public funds, while it must always
have remained to be seen whether any immediate interposition
of the Government could have provided for such multifarious
bodies so well as individual judgment and energy, stimulated by
the sense of self-dependence.
The commissioners, therefore, contented themselves, in regard
to the North American Colonies, with collecting, publishing, and
diffusing, as widely as possible, correct accounts of prices and
wages, and with pointing out the impositions against which emi-
grants should be most on their guard. This body was dissolved,
however, in 1832 and the practical working of its recommenda-
tions entrusted to the Colonial Department.1
In 1838, Lord Durham held an inquiry into the unrest then
existing in Upper and Lower Canada ; his observations, together
with the views of Gibbon Wakefield and Charles Buller,2 appeared
as a Blue Book in January, 1839. After discussing the differences
which gave rise to friction between the French and British in-
habitants, the report dealt somewhat fully with the evils encom-
passing the lot of the emigrant, the want of administration which
characterized the action of the Colonial authorities, and the
unsatisfactory systems then in vogue of granting land. Durham
advised that self-government should be given to Canada, but,
in addition to this important recommendation, suggested that
emigration to these areas should be made more attractive,3 that
the lands should be efficiently surveyed, and that a judicious
system of colonization should be introduced.
1 Report to the Secretary of State for the Colonies from the Agent-General for
Emigration, April 28, 1838, No. 388, p. 3.
2 Vide Sir Charles Lucas — Lord Durham's Report, Vol. Ill, p. 336, etc., and
especially page 351, for account of Durham's mission.
1 "All the gentlemen whose evidence I have last quoted are warm advocates
of systematic emigration. I object, along with them, only to such emigration as
now takes place without forethought, preparation, method, or system of any kind."
— Lord Durham's Report on the Affairs of British North America, Vol. I, p. 189.
EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM 113
Buller complained that though emigration to Canada was
more or less unsatisfactory yet people were content to allow the
system to continue unchallenged. "This misconception is un-
doubtedly attributable, in a great degree," he said, "to the cir-
cumstance that all evidence obtained on the subject was collected
in the country from which the emigrants departed, instead of
that at which they arrived. Had the position of the inquiries
been reversed, they must have arrived at very different conclu-
sions, and have discovered that no emigration so imperatively
demanded the regulating interposition of the Legislature as that
for which they specially refused to provide." x Buller then went
on to point out the trials which beset the emigrant on landing
in Canada.2 It was the duty of the Government, he affirmed,
to organize the outflow to North America just as much as that
to Australia. There may be a difference in the character and
circumstances of the movement to the two regions, he argued,
but none so great as to free the former from all interference,
while the latter was to a great extent officially regulated.
Buller summarized his views as follows : 3
The measures which Government have adopted are deplorably
defective. They have left untouched some of the chief evils of emi-
gration, and have very incompletely remedied those even against
which they were specially directed. Although the safeguards for
the emigrant during the passage are increased, and, in many places,
enforced, yet there is still no check of any sort whatever over a large
proportion of the emigrant vessels.4 The provisions for the reception
of emigrants at Quebec, so far as the Government is concerned, are
of the most inefficient and unsatisfactory character : and the poorer
classes would have to find their way as they best might to the Upper
Provinces, or to the United States, were it not for the operation of
societies whose main object is not the advantage of emigrants, but
to free the cities of Quebec and Montreal from the intolerable nuisance
of a crowd of unemployed, miserable, and, too often, diseased per-
sons. The Government agent at Quebec has no power ; he has not
even any rules for his guidance. At Montreal there has not been any
agent for the last two years. The whole extent, therefore, of the
1 Report, p. 225.
2 Vide Chapter VII. "The Reception of Immigrants."
3 Report, p. 227.
4 I.e. those carrying fewer passengers than constitute an emigrants' ship.
1 14 CHARACTERISTICS
Government interference has been to establish in England agents to
superintend the enforcement of the provisions of the Passengers'
Acts, in respect of the emigrants from some ports, and to maintain
an agent in -the Province of Lower Canada to observe rather than
regulate the emigration into that province.
I would recommend, therefore, that a specified portion of the prod-
uce of the wild-land tax and of the future sales of land and timber
should be applied in providing for emigration : a part in furnishing
free passage to emigrants of the most desirable age, as far as may be
of both sexes in equal numbers, and part in defraying any expenses
occasioned by the superintendence of the emigration of those to whom,
in conformity with this rule, or from other circumstances, a free pas-
sage cannot be offered.
The whole emigration from the United Kingdom should be so
far placed under the superintendence of Government that emigrants
conveyed at the public expense should necessarily proceed in vessels
chartered and regulated by the Government, and that all persons
willing to pay for their own passage should be entitled to proceed in
vessels so chartered and regulated at a cost for the passage not exceed-
ing the charge in private vessels. Proper means of shelter and trans-
port should be provided at the different ports in the Colonies to which
emigrants proceed ; and they should be forwarded to the place where
they can obtain employment under the direction of responsible agents
acting under central authority.
When, in 1845, the Great Famine overtook Ireland with such
disastrous results, a Select Committee was appointed to consider
the means by which colonization might be employed to alleviate
the sufferings which were then existing in that country. After
examining the causes which had brought about the crisis, the
Committee directed its attentions to an inquiry into the follow-
ing matters :
1. The capacity which certain Colonies possessed for absorbing
European labor.
2. The extent to which a supply of labour might be safely intro-
duced into the various Colonies.
3. -The effect of an increased supply of emigrant labor on the
productiveness and value of Colonial land.
4. The effect which colonization would probably produce on the
investment of British capital within the colony to which such coloni-
zation might be directed.
EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM 115
5. The effect which might be anticipated by the promotion or
encouragement of works of undisputed usefulness, such as the rail-
roads projected in British North America.
6. The effect of an augmented population in the British Colonies,
not only in increasing their wealth, their agricultural, mineral, and
commercial resources, but in adding to their strength and means of
defense and thus consolidating and securing the power of the Empire.
Unfortunately, little or no good came of the inquiry. Char-
itable societies continued to do their utmost to alleviate the
sufferings of the afflicted people, but governmental action was
in no wise accelerated as a result of the inquiry.
In consequence of the representations made by Lord Dur-
ham, the Colonial Land and Emigration Department was
founded in 1840. The principal functions of this body were to
collect and diffuse statistical information pertaining to the
Colonies, to effect sales of colonial lands in Australia, to promote
by the proceeds of such sales emigration to the Colonies in which
the sales had occurred, to superintend, generally, all emigration
movements connected with this country and its dependencies,
and, lastly, to carry into execution the Passengers' Acts.1
The operations of the board were fluctuating, but between
1847 and 1869 they sent out 339,338 emigrants at a cost of
£4,864,000 of which £532,000 was provided by those taking
part in the exodus or their friends, and the rest by colonial funds.
The arrangements were mostly concerned with Australia.
In their thirty-third report, under the date of April 3oth,
1873, the Chief Commissioner wrote :
My Lord, We have the honor to submit to your Lordship our
Report on Emigration for the year 1872. As the administration of
the Passengers' Act has been intrusted by the Act of last session
(35 and 36 Viet. c. 73) to the Board of Trade, this is the last report
1 Lord John Russell's instructions to the Emigration Commissioners, January
I4th, 1840 (Government paper, No. 35) :
"In your capacity of a General Board for the sale of lands and for promoting
emigration, your duties may be conveniently arranged under the four following
heads. First, the collection and diffusion of accurate statistical knowledge; sec-
ondly, the sale in this country of waste lands in the colonies ; thirdly, the applica-
tion of the proceeds of such sales towards the removal of emigrants ; and, fourthly,
the rendering of periodical accounts, both pecuniary and statistical, of your adminis-
tration of this trust."
1 1 6 CHARACTERISTICS
we shall have to make to the Secretary of State on emigration from
this country.
Other functions which they performed had been gradually
taken from them as the Colonies, one by one, became self-
governing. After the Act of 1872 their sole duties consisted in
controlling the movement of coolie labor, and, when each
commissioner retired, his post was allowed to lapse. The last
commissioner withdrew in 1878. Between 1873 an<^ I^77 a
Colonization Circular was published annually.
In 1880, the Canadian authorities approached the Home
Government with a colonization scheme by which the latter
should advance moneys, about £80 per family, for meeting
expenses incurred in transporting and settling poor families from
Ireland on plots situated in the Northwest Provinces. The
Canadian Government was to give each settler 160 acres of land,
upon which the advance was to be secured by a first charge, but
they were to undertake no guarantee for the repayment of such
advance. It was intended to carry out the scheme through a
commission or association. These proposals were submitted to
the Irish authorities, who took no action in the matter.1 The
reasons for allowing the proposal to lapse were never definitely
stated, but it may be conjectured that the home authorities were
dissatisfied, first, with the guarantees, and, secondly, with the
refusal of the Canadian officials to undertake the task of collect-
ing the repayments.
In 1883, the Northwest Land Company of Canada empow-
ered Sir George Stephen to place another proposal before the
Imperial Parliament. The basis of this scheme was as follows :
the Government was to lend the company a million pounds for
ten years, free of interest, and in consideration of this loan the
company would undertake to remove ten thousand families,
say fifty thousand people, from the west of Ireland and settle
them in the northwest of Canada.
In the ordinary way the Canadian Government was prepared
to give each head of a family 160 acres of land, and the company
proposed to supply him with a house, a cow, implements, and
everything necessary to insure a fair start, even to providing
sufficient plowing and seeding for the first year's crop. The
1 Report on Colonization, 1891, Appendix, p. 45, par. i.
EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM 117
company also agreed to meet all expenditure incidental to the
removal and settlement of the emigrants. It was thus submitted
that the cost to the Home Government would only be the interest
on £100 for ten years, say, at the rate of 2-J per cent, £25 per
family. The emigrants themselves, however, were to be called
upon to pay certain moderate charges to the company. This
scheme received the warm support of the Colonial Office and the
Irish Government, though the latter made two requests which
were approved by the Treasury, viz. (a) that the emigrants
should be drawn in entire families from the congested districts
only, and (b) that the holding of each emigrating family should
be consolidated with a neighboring holding.
The proposal, it must be added, was abandoned because the
Treasury thought it necessary to stipulate that the Dominion
Government should make itself responsible for recovering the
advances from the settlers, both principal and interest, a burden
which the Canadian authorities declined to undertake on polit-
ical grounds.1 Other schemes of emigration were suggested from
time to time, but all suffered rejection, as the Home Govern-
ment was temporarily averse to considering any which returned
less than 3^- per cent interest on the capital involved, and in
which they were not relieved of all financial liability.
The prolonged depression amongst the working classes which
lasted between 1884 and 1886, however, forced the Government
to change its views, and Mr. Rathbone 2 wrote : 3
In the autumn of 1887 Lord Lothian asked the land companies
if they would renew their proposals; but they declined to do so,
stating that the circumstances had altered (though in what way did
not appear) and the scheme which was eventually agreed upon was
far less favorable to the Government, in that there was no guarantee
by the companies for repayment even of the capital.
The scheme to which Mr. Rathbone referred was the Crofters'
Colonization Scheme of 1888 and 1889.
As a result of numerous representations made to the Gov-
ernment by philanthropists who viewed emigration with favor,
the Emigrants' Information Office was opened in October, 1886.
1 Report on Colonization, 1891, Appendix, p. 45, par. 2.
2 A member of the Colonization Committee of 1891.
3 Report on Colonization, 1891, Appendix, p. 46, par. 3.
1 18 CHARACTERISTICS
From its inception this Institution has been placed under the
control of the Colonial Office. It is subsidized by Government
but managed by a voluntary unpaid committee.1 The committee
included members of parliament, philanthropists, and repre-
sentatives of the working classes. The Secretary of State for
the Colonies is nominally President of the committee, but does
not actually preside. He nominates the members of the commit-
tee, and all points on which any serious doubt arises are referred
for his decision, but the expenditure of the Parliamentary grant
and the management and working of the office are left to the
discretion of the committee.
The Government at the outset allowed an annual sum of £650
to cover rent of rooms and all office expenses, in addition to free
printing and postage. After the report of the Colonization Com-
mittee in 1891 the sum was raised to £1000 and the grant became
subsequently increased to £1500.
Originally the scope of the office was confined to the British
Colonies and to those Colonies, only, which are outside the tropics,
and are thus fields of emigration in the ordinary sense. It was
found necessary, however, to widen its sphere and to give in-
formation — though more limited in extent — not only as to
certain tropical colonies, but also, from time to time, concerning
various foreign countries ; and especially it has been found neces-
sary to issue warnings in cases where, as, for example, in the case
of Brazil, it has seemed desirable to discourage emigration from
the Mother Country.
In regard to foreign countries, the committee derives its
information almost entirely through the Foreign Office and His
Majesty's representatives abroad. In regard to the British
Colonies, information is supplied partly by official, partly by
unofficial sources.
In June and July of the year 1889 a Select Committee of the
House of Commons sat to " inquire into various schemes which
have been proposed to Her Majesty's Government in order to
facilitate emigration from the congested districts of the United
Kingdom to the British Colonies or elsewhere ; to examine into
the results of any schemes which have received practical trial
in recent years ; and to report generally whether, in their opinion,
1 The Chairman, who is a member of the Colonial Office, is paid.
EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM 119
it is desirable that further facilities should be given to promote
emigration; and, if so, upon the means by and the conditions
under which such emigration can best be carried out, and the
quarters to which it can most advantageously be directed."1
After having examined nine witnesses the following interim report
was issued towards the end of the month of July :
Your Committee are of opinion that at this late period of the
Session it will not be in their power to conclude their investigations ;
they have therefore agreed to report the evidence, already taken, to
the House, and to recommend that a committee on the same subject
should be appointed early in the next Session of Parliament.2
The committee again sat in 1890, and for a third time in 1891.
It was in the latter year that the following summary of their
conclusions was issued :
1. Your Committee have no grounds for thinking that the
present condition of the United Kingdom generally calls for any
general scheme of state-organized colonization or emigration.
2. The powers in possession of local authorities should be
sufficient to enable them, at no onerous risk, to assist in the coloni-
zation or emigration of persons or families from their own localities.
3. The congested districts of Ireland and of the Highlands
and Islands of Scotland form an exceptional case and require relief
by assistance to industries, to colonization or emigration, and, where
suitable, to migration.
4. The provisions proposed in the Land and Congested Districts
(Ireland) Bill are ample for these purposes.
5. Provisions similar to some of the foregoing should be made
for the Crofter districts of Scotland.
6. The Colonization Board be continued and reconstructed
for the purpose of colonization and emigration from such districts.
7. The power of enlarging Crofters' holdings in that Act should
be kept alive.
8. Crofts vacated by emigration or migration should be added
to existing holdings without power of subdivision.
9. The experiment of colonizing the Crofter population in Can-
ada should be further tried.
10. The proposals of the Government of British Columbia3
should be favorably entertained.
1 Report on Colonization, 1889, p. in. 2 Ibid.
3 These proposals fell through as the Governments failed to agree on matters
of finance.
1 20 CHARACTERISTICS
11. The agency of companies for colonization and emigration
should be taken advantage of, both as regards the aforesaid coloniza-
tion in Canada and elsewhere.
12. The Government grant to the Emigrants' Information
Office should be increased.1
As a result of this report, further governmental schemes were
dropped, but the grant awarded annually to the Emigrants'
Information Office was augmented. From 1891 to 1905 no action
seems to have been taken, but, in the latter year, the Unemployed
Workmen Act, which contained clauses facilitating the trans-
ference of needy workpeople, was passed.2 In the following year,
Sir Rider Haggard made certain suggestions for a colonization
scheme, which may be briefly summarized as follows. The
authorities at home were to advance to the Salvation Army, or
a similar body, a sum of money roughly equaling thirty thousand
pounds, and in return the institution was to collect a vast num-
ber of distressed town-bred families and install them on farm
plots in Canada. A departmental committee was appointed to
give consideration to the suggestions, but this body reported
unfavorably and the scheme was not attempted.3 Since 1906
the inactivity of the central authorities has been continued, but
a great expansion in the working of charitable institutions has
marked the period. To-day there are considerably more than
a hundred societies engaged in the emigration movement ; some
give their services in a general way, others confine their opera-
tions to people of certain religious denominations or to dwellers
in particular localities, whilst others again deal only with women
or children. The majority give financial assistance in deserving
cases, though certain of them are organized merely to provide
information, guidance, and protection. As a general rule, the
societies are doing valuable work by sending to the various
colonies able-bodied people who could not otherwise join in
the exodus.
1 Report on Colonization, 1891, p. xvi.
2 "The Central Body may, if they think fit, in any case of an unemployed person
referred to them by a distress committee, assist that person by aiding the emigra-
tion or removal to another area of that person and any of his dependents." — 5
Ed. 7, ch. 18, sec. 5.
3 Cf . " Colonization Schemes," Chapter X, p. 244.
EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM 121
In bygone years, certain of the less responsible organizations
made emigration a vehicle for transferring " undesirables " from
the Mother Country to the Colonies. As no such practices have
been attempted for many years past, it is somewhat discouraging
to note the attitude with which a few of the Colonial Governments
still approach the home societies as a body. Everything which
can be done to eliminate the unfit from the fit is now performed
by the societies, and none but those who can undergo a severe
and searching test are permitted to proceed. In many cases,
farm colonies have been instituted within the United Kingdom
and prospective settlers are required to give practical demon-
strations of their fitness at one or other of them before they are
passed as suitable. Not only do the societies themselves require
their candidates to pass a very severe test, but the officials
attached to the staffs of the various High Commissioners and
Agents-General institute searching inquiries also. Authentic
figures are available to prove that, of the people befriended by
the East End Emigration Fund, less than 5 per cent turn out
failures, only 5 per cent fail from the Church Emigration Society,
never more than 4 per cent annually from the South African
Colonisation Society, less than 2 per cent from Dr. Barnardo's
Homes, whilst other societies can show equally satisfactory
records.1 In spite of this complex system of selection and these
reassuring figures, there are still people, living in the colonies,
who condemn the work of the societies in general. A writer
living at Hamilton, Ontario, says : 2
At present, among the great stream of English people whom your
agencies are sending to us, are many who are the scourings from Lon-
don streets — the hangers-on to Church charitable organizations —
the type of men who demand work, but that is the last thing they
really desire.
It will be noticed that in this quotation not one shred of evi-
dence is given to support the serious allegations made, nor does
the writer seem to be aware that no man who was work-shy
and studied his comforts would leave London for Hamilton;
1 Official Report of the Emigration Conference convened by the Royal Colonial
Institute, 1910, pp. 33, 37, 39, 43, etc.
3 Quoted from The Times of May 3oth, 1910.
122 CHARACTERISTICS
also, it may be pointed out that such statements not only condemn
the operations of our home organizations, but they presuppose
a want of confidence in the colonial emigration commissioners
as well.
Within recent years public opinion has gradually grown to
view with considerable disfavor any form of British emigration
proceeding to foreign countries. In 1907, the Imperial Confer-
ence gave expression to this feeling by passing the following
resolution :
That it is desirable to encourage British emigrants to proceed to
British Colonies rather than foreign countries: that the Imperial
Government be requested to cooperate with any Colonies desiring
immigrants in assisting suitable persons to emigrate : that the Secre-
tary of State for the Colonies be requested to nominate representa-
tives of the Dominions to the committee of the Emigrants' Infor-
mation Office.
In 1908, the question of emigration was discussed by the Poor
Law Commission. Unfortunately, the ground necessarily covered
by this inquiry was so extensive that little time could be spared
for an adequate consideration of the factors governing the na-
tional exodus. The Majority Report of this Commission spoke
of the value of emigration when supplemented with other reforms,
but gave no hint as to the ways and means of organizing such
a movement. The Minority Report was more informing. What-
ever provisions are made for minimizing unemployment, it
affirmed, there will always be a residuum of men and women
who will be in want of work ; for them, an emigration and immi-
gration division will prove valuable. This division, it suggested,
should develop the office now maintained by the Secretary of
State for the Colonies in close communication with the responsible
governments of other parts of the Empire. A Minister of Labor
would direct this office, and his duties would include not only
the control of aided but non-aided emigrants as well. So far
as they go, the suggestions made by the Minority Commissioners
are valuable, but, from such an authoritative body, a complete
sketch of the machinery required to control both the emigration
from home and the immigration to the Colonies would have
proved welcome.
EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM 123
Finally, the subject of emigration was considered by the recent
Imperial Conference of 1911. Mr. Burns, as President of the
Local Government Board, said that since the last Conference
the object of the resolution passed in 1907 had been, to a great
extent, secured. In 1906, the total number of emigrants from
the Mother Country was 194,671, of whom the different parts
of the Empire took 105,178 or 54 per cent. In 1910, the num-
bers were 233,944 and 159,000 respectively, showing 68 per cent
to the Empire. For the first four months of the year 1911 there
was an increase over the corresponding period of 1910 of 23,000
or 29 per cent, and the Empire had taken the whole of that in-
crease. Australia and New Zealand had received ten thousand
more people in the first four months of 1911 than in the similar
period of 1910, or 133 per cent increase. If the rate of increase
for the first four months were continued for the whole of 1911,
the total emigrants for Great Britain to all countries would
amount, he said, to three hundred thousand, of whom, it was
estimated, 230,000, or nearly 80 per cent, would go to different
parts of the Empire, a generous contribution in quantity and
quality from the Mother Country. In 1900, the percentage
absorbed by the Empire of the total emigration from the United
Kingdom was only 33 per cent. The increase from 33 per cent to
80 per cent was a justification of the excellent and increasing
work in the right direction carried on by the now admirably
organized Emigrants' Information Office at home. Moreover,
it was generally admitted that the quality of the emigrants
had also improved. The total estimated emigration of 300,000
for 1911 represented 60 per cent of the natural increase of the
population of the United Kingdom as compared with 48 per cent
in 1910 and 50 per cent in 1907. But for the saving in life repre-
sented by a lower death rate, and a much lower infant mortality,
this emigration would be a very heavy drain on the United King-
dom. In ten years Scotland and Ireland combined had increased
their population by 210,000, or less than "the total emigration
from Great Britain for the one year 1910. With a diminishing
birth rate the Mother Country could not safely go beyond 300,000
a year, and if 80 per cent of these went to different parts of the
Empire, the Conference would probably agree that this was as
much as they could reasonably require. The Dominions were
124 CHARACTERISTICS
entitled to have the surplus, but they must not diminish the
seed plot. They could absorb the overflow, but they must not
empty the tank.
In reviewing emigration generally, Mr. Burns said that the
business of the Emigrants' Information Office had more than
doubled since 1907, and that its machinery was being kept up
to modern requirements. Over organization, or attempts to do
more than was now being done, would probably check many of
the voluntary non-political and benevolent associations con-
nected with the work, which filled a place that no State organiza-
tion could possibly occupy. Information was disseminated
through one thousand public libraries and municipal buildings
in addition to many post offices. Six hundred and fifty Boards
of Guardians sent all their emigrated children to the Dominions.
In twenty-one years 9300 Poor Law children had been emigrated
at a cost to the rates of £109,000. The quality of these children
was indicated by the fact that out of 12,790 children from the
Poor Law Schools of London, only 62 had been returned by
their employers in consequence of natural defects, incompatibility
of temper, or disposition. One hundred and thirty Distress Com-
mittees had sent 16,000 emigrants to different parts of the Em-
pire in five years at a cost of £127,000. Lastly, before 1907,
army reservists were not allowed to leave this country and to
continue to draw their reserve pay. This regulation had been
modified, with the result that since 1907, 8000 reservists had
been allowed to reside abroad, of whom only 329 were not under
the British flag.
GERMAN IMMIGRATION1
GUSTAVUS OHLINGER
THE PILGRIMS
AN INCENTIVE similar to that which brought the Pilgrims
Ix to New England inspired the German immigrations of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1677 William Perm,
on one of the missionary tours which he undertook for the purpose
of spreading the doctrines of the Quaker sect, happened to visit
the Pietists of Fra.nk;fort-on-the-Majn. Four years later, when
he received a grant of land in America, these people corresponded
with his agent. A company was formed among them which
eventually purchased twenty-five thousand acres of land. In the
summer of 1683 the first immigrants, most of them Mennonites
whom Penn's preaching had converted to Quakerism, sailed on
the ship Concord. They arrived in Philadelphia on October _£.
1683. That day has since been celebrated by German- Americans
as the beginning of their history in this country, and the Concord
and its passengers have been regarded with something of the
same veneration that the Mayflower and the Pilgrim Fathers
have received from Americans generally.
During the religious and political troubles of the eighteenth
century, England and her colonies were the refuge of the per-
secuted of the continent. In 1709 thirteen thousand inhabitants
of the Palatinate fled to London. They were maintained by the
English government, and subsequently colonized in New York
and the Carolinas. The same was done for the Protestants of
Salzburg, Austria, who fled from the persecution of Archbishop
Leopold. According to a German scholar, England's humane
and generous treatment of these unfortunates will always re-
dound to her glory.
1 From " Their True Faith and Allegiance " by Gustavus Ohlinger. The
Macmillan Company, 1916.
125
1 26 CHARACTERISTICS
Many other sects — the Moravians, the Reformed, the
Lutherans, the Tunkers, the Schwenkfelders — followed. All
were attracted by the same ideal, — freedom of worship after
the dictates of their own consciences. In religious belief they
had much in common with English denominations. Having no
ties to bind them to the old country, they soon adapted them-
selves to the conditions of the new. At the outbreak of the
War of Independence they numbered some two hundred and
twenty thousand, and they contributed their full quota to the
revolutionary armies. One of the traditions of those stirring
times relates how Peter Muhlenberg, pastor of a Lutheran church,
mounted his pulpit one Sunday soon after the call to arms had
gone forth. At the end of his sermon he admonished his flock
that there was a time for prayer, a time for fasting and a time
for battle ; the time for battle had now come, and casting aside
his clerical gown he stood before his congregation in the uniform
of a colonel of the continental army. The drums beat outside,
Four hundred of his parishioners rallied to the standard, and on
the fields of Brandy wine, German town, and Monmouth proved
their allegiance to their adopted land.
THE EXILES
The high tides of German immigration during the first seventy
years of the nineteenth century were marked by the political
troubles in the old country, — the suppression of the student
societies and turners in 1820, the revolution of 1832, and the more
important revolution of 1848. Each of these disturbances sent
its quota of political refugees to America. Some sought America
merely as a temporary asylum, intending to return when con-
ditions in the old country had improved. Others, despairing
of the struggle for national unity and freedom in Germany,
hoped to realize their ideals by founding a German state in the
American west. The leaders in the movement were Paul Follen
and Friedrich Munch, — names which in the last few years
have been given much prominence by German- American or-
ganizations. "We must not," these enthusiasts argued, "leave
Germany without at least taking the first steps towards realizing
German national unity and freedom ; we will lay the foundations
GERMAN IMMIGRATION 127
of a new and free Germany in the great North American Re-
public. We will take with us as many as possible of our best
people, and will provide for others to follow; thus may we be
able to establish in one of the American territories an essentially
German state as a refuge for those who have found conditions in
Germany intolerable."
Numerous societies were formed to facilitate the immigration
necessary to accomplish this purpose. Niles' Register remarks
in a contemporary paragraph that "a plan is in progress in the
southwest of Germany to make up a state and ship it over to
America to become the twenty-fifth member of the confederacy."
One such state arrived at New York with a complete outfit, in-
cluding a telescope and a town bell, but disintegrated on the
long trip to St. Louis. The territories of Arkansas and Wisconsin
were at different times selected as the promised land. When
Texas declared its independence, the opportunity seemed pre-
sented for a peaceful conquest of that sparsely settled country,
and several thousand immigrants were sent to the Lone Star
state. It is said that the British government favored the scheme,
hoping thereby to place a permanent barrier in the way of the
further expansion of the United States towards the southwest.
Of all these refugees the " f orty-eighters " clung most tena-
ciously to their language and national ideals. These people have
become known in German-American history as the " greens," as
distinguished from the older settlers, who were dubbed the
" grays." The " greens" severely upbraided their countrymen
who had preceded them for having allowed themselves to become
Americanized, and they made serious efforts to retard further
assimilation. As Germans they felt they had a mission to fulfill,
and that mission was nothing less than the complete Germanizing
oHhe United States. This was to be accomplished through their
intellectual superiority, their claims to which, though un-
doubtedly justified in some instances, they made no efforts to
conceal, — and also by founding German communities, and from
these as centers making their influence felt throughout the
country. At one time it was proposed to concentrate immigration
in Wisconsin until through a jprerjonderance of the population
they~°had succeeded in repjacjflgjjiglish with German as the
, of the legislature, and of the schools. Some
I28 CHARACTERISTICS
of the enthusiasts went so far as to forecast the time when the
United States, having come under the influence of German ideas,
would extend its sway throughout the world. The German
people would in that indirect way realize their ambition for
world dominion.
But as the years passed, the vision of these exiles faded and
grew dim. A new Germany, free and powerful, seemed an im-
possibility ; a transplanted Germany, in the form of a state set
down in the western wilderness, dissolved upon contact with the
realities of the frontier ; German communities could not maintain
their solidarity amid the complexities of industriaHife ; and the
dreamers were left with the empire of the German spirit, the
romantic Germany of the bards and singers, the world of the
philosophers and poets. And when, after hopes deferred and
years of waiting, the man arrived who through the stern dis-
cipline of blood and iron was to weld the principalities of Germany
into an empire, there had appeared in America one of the most
tragic and compelling figures of all history. Bjsjrmrck__was
forgotten, and the exiles rallied to the call of Lincoln.
KULTURPOLITIK
The succeeding immigration differed materially from those
that have been described. The earlier immigrants had brought
with them bitter memories of German disunion and of the
tyrannies and persecutions of their petty princes. Pride of
nationality they had in some degree, but none of state or country.
The less educated, lacking the political vision and ambitions of
the revolutionaries, had scarcely more than family sentiment to
bind them to their old homes. To them America was the great
country of freedom, of religious liberty, of__or£rjortunity, the
promised land of anthejrjreams. Their old allegiance, together
with all that it implied, they were glad and anxious to cast aside
as a loathed garment. But the great waves of German immi-
gration, which, gathering volume in the seventies, finally reached
their flood in the eighties, came from entirely different impulses.
Neither national ideals, political freedom, nor religious liberty
was uppermost in the minds of these strangers. Germany had
been united. What Bismarck termed "the tragedy of the ages"
GERMAN IMMIGRATION 129
had been repaired. The empire furnished a concrete expression
for German national aspirations. No longer as outcasts did
these wanderers approach our shores, but as representatives of a
state of whose achievements they were proud and of whose future
they vaguely hoped to remain a part. National and political
aspirations had been fulfilled, — what they asked from America,
primarily, wasfmaterial benefits?
i A spiritual change came over Germany. The will to power,
enthralled from the time that the last Hohenstaufen met his fate
on the scaffold in Naples, was emancipated. This had been
accomplished largely by merging the individual in the State,
and by making the State synonymous with the Hohenzollern
dynasty. But this was overlooked in the enthusiasm for the
new-found strength, and German professors set to work to square
theory with fact. "The State is a person," exclaims Bluntschli.
More than that, it is a man, not a woman, and possesses all the
primal male attributes of positive action on environment. It
owes no responsibility and must be ruthless in accomplishing its
destiny.
With these vital forces of the nation organized and ready to be
released, the educated men surveyed the past and present.
Spain, France, and England had each had its day. They had
.each boasted a world dominion. Each had in turn succumbed
to its successor. England, the last, had long since lost its pre-
eminence in every field of human endeavor. The British empire
was held in palsied hands which required only the effort of youth
'to strike down. Each of these conquering nations had, however,
through its culture, language, and institutions, struck deep root
in foreign soil. German culture would therefore have to establish
itself in order to pave the way for commerce and political control.
To do this required organized effort. Every German in a position
of influence in a foreign land, whether as an educator, aj>rp-
fessional man, a clergyman, a technician, or a director of industrial
enterprises, represented an outlay of productive capital. It was
the task of these men to make known the aims and content of
German culture in all its branches, from the tilling of the soil to
the 'philosophy of life, from the technique of mechanics to the
technique of statesmanship, so that the desire to acquire the
benefits of this culture might be stimulated. The respect which
1 30 CHARACTERISTICS
they earned through the thoroughness of their achievement
would redound to the prestige of the empire, and the influence
which they thus acquired was to be an asset in the achievement of
national ideals. The conscious direction of these influences is
what Germans call Kulturpolitik, a word which has no English
equivalent, for the reason that the whole idea is a German
invention.
Equally important was it to retain at least the spiritual and
intellectual allegiance of German emigrants. In 1881 there was
organized the "Educational Alliance for the Preservation of
German Culture in Foreign Lands " (Allgemeiner deutscher
Schuherein zur Erhaltung des Deutschthums im Auslande).
"Not a man can we spare," so reads its declaration of principles,
— "if we expect to hold our own against the one hundred and
twenty-five millions who already speak the English language
and who have preempted the most desirable fields for expansion."
A similar thought inspired the Pan-German Alliance (Alldeutszher
Verband). It aims to preserve German language and culture,
to vitalize the German national sentiment throughout the world
and to support Germans wherever, in a distant land, they are
struggling to preserve their solidarity against a foreign civili-
zation. "The German ppnpje is a race of rulers." so they declare.
"As such it must be respected everywhere in the world. The.
Alliance does not believe that German national development
ended with the results of the war of 1870, great and glorious
though they were. It is rather convinced that, with the position
then won, there has come a multitude of new and greater duties,
to neglect which would mean the decadence of our people." A
number of branches of this society, as well as of the Navy
League (Flottenverein) , were established in the United States.
The educated Germans had become imbued with these ideas
before leaving the old country, and they now kept in touch
with their development. Journalists and clergymen naturally
found it to their interests to encourage German traditions and
the use of the German language. The circulation of jtheirja£ws-
papers and the membership of their churches depended upon
these conditions. The most potent influence, however, in
Kulturpolitik have been the men who, in constantly increasing
numbers, have come to occupy positions in our universities,
GERMAN IMMIGRATION 131
colleges, and public and private schools. Being, by virtue of
their profession, less exposed to assimilative influences, they
form the outposts of Germanism, in the United States.
It was about twenty years ago that voices of the new Germany
were first heard in this country. The Spanish-American war at
one stroke destroyed the isolation of the United States. The
part she would play on the stage of world politics became a
matter of vital interest. American ideas of colonial expansion and
of responsibility towards foreign races approached to those which
had built up the British Empire. Many points of contact between
American institutions and those of England were brought to
consciousness. Cecil Rhodes, dying, left a will which provided a
means for closer intellectual and cultural association between
the United States and Great Britain. Kipling celebrated in
verse the mission of the Anglo-Saxon people. Much was said
about Anglo-Saxon unity, a phrase which Germans interpreted
as Anglo-Saxon imperialism.
This was the beginning of the struggle. It was the signal for the
mobilization of the forces of Kulturpolitik in this country. Anglp-
Saxon unity, or even a closer understanding between the branches
of that race, was seen as an insuperable obstacle in the way of
German plans for world dominion. Journalists, clergymen,
educators, began to agitate among their countrymen for the
solidarity of the German element, the preservation of the German
language, and the spread of German culture. Their appeals
found a ready response among the later arrivals and even engaged
the attention of the older element, who, though having no interest
in Germany as an empire, still cherished the memory of the
Fatherland as the home of Goethe, Schiller, of Grimm's Fairy
Tales, of the philosophers and musicians. Men holding chairs
in our universities, permeated with the teaching of Treitschke,
Droysen, and other modern German historians, pointed to what
they regarded as signs of the impending dissolution of the
British^Empire ; the costly Boer war had drained its strength ;
the discontent in India, the troubles in Ireland, were under-
mining its constitution; Germany was destined to overthrow
the palsied colossus and succeed it as a world empire ; German
culture would then be supreme, the German language the
universal tongue. Anglo-Saxon civilization the agitators both
I32 CHARACTERISTICS
disparaged as decadent and, like Treitschke, cordially hated.
Puritanism, to them the essence of hypocrisy, represented its
most odious pha,se. They proclaimed that only in a political
ancLgeoffraphical sense had they become Americans with the
oath of naturalization, — in all other respects they remained
Germans ; they condemned any approach to assimilation and
decried the moral of Zangwill's "Melting Pot." Some sought to
give the propaganda a patriotic guise by declaring that it was
the sacred mission of the German element to guard themselves,
their language, and their culture from native influences in order
that as a chosen people they might save America from the decay
which was destroying the vitals of everything Anglo-Saxon. The
media for the propaganda were the lecture platform, the German
newspapers, German societies, churches, and schools. A German
who had served as a member of the Reichstag began the publi-
cation in New York of a monthly magazine as the special expo-
nent of these ideas.
Organizations of every kind have always been a feature^ of
German life in America.' The national "Sangerbund" was
organized in 1849. The turners organized as far back as 1848,
and have had a national alliance since 1850, and to-day boast
forty thousand members, with a normal school in Indianapolis.
In 1870 the association of German teachers (Deutsch-amerikan-
ischer Lehrerbund) was formed and soon after that a training school
was established in Milwaukee. In 1885 a national organization
of German schools (National deutsch-amerikanischer Schulverein)
was started, but met with the opposition of the older element,
who, while they favored the propaganda for the German language
in parts of Austria and Hungary, could see no reason for such
a movement in the United States. There are associations of
German veterans and reservists, many mutualjud and Jbenefit
societies, the well-known singing societies, and innumerable
other organizations.
Under the influence of the new propaganda all these societies
were brought into closer touch with each other. In 1899 the
German societies of Pennsylvania formed a state federation
known as the German-American Central Alliance. This suggested
a national organization, and in the following" year delegates from
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Minnesota assembled in
GERMAN IMMIGRATION 133
Philadelphia and formed a temporary association. In 1901, on
the anniversary of the landing of the Concord pilgrims, a perma-
nent organization was perfected, known as the National German-
American Alliance. This achievement the promoters regard as
of the greatest importance for the future of the German element
in the United States.
According to its constitution the membership of the Alliance
is made up of state and local alliances. German societies every-
where have been urged to unite in local and state federations.
It is only where city and state federations have not been organized
that individual societies are taken into membership. The work
of organization has been prosecuted with vigor in the last few
years, with the result that there is now a state federation in every
state of the Union, and every city of importance has its Stadtver-
band, made up of delegates of local organizations. The Alliance
is supported by a per capita levy upon the membership of all
component societies. In 1907 it was incorporated by act of
Congress, and it now claims to reach, through its subordinate
state and local federations and individual societies, not less than
two million five hundred thousand Germans.
The principal objects of the Alliance, as officially announced,
are to awaken and strengthen the sense of unity among the
people of German origin jn America; to check nativistic eji-
croachments ; to maintain and safeguard friendly relations
between~S.merica and Germany; to augment the influence of
German culture by encouraging the use of the German language
and making its teaching in the public schools compulsory: to
introduce into school histories a proper estimate of the work of
German pioneers and of their part in developing our institutions ;
to oppose restrictions upon immigration; to_ )i,bera.Hze qur
naturalizaticn^Taws by removing knowledge of the English
language and other educational tests as requirements of citizen-
ship; and, finally, to combat Puritan_influences, particularly
invasions of personal liberty in the form of restrictions upon the
liquor traffic. The Alliance is pledged to bring its entire organi-
zaHonTo the support of any state federation which is engaged in
a struggle for any of these objects.
"We must be united, united, united, — every petty jealousy,
every local interest, must be forgotten," the officers of the
I34 CHARACTERISTICS
Alliance have repeatedly admonished their members. From the
point of view of the American who is interested solely in the
amalgamation of races in a more perfect union and in the highest
development of our national life, it is difficult to understand
what exigency requires the awakening and strengthening of the
sense of unity among citizens of German origin. If the Alliance
professes patriotic purposes, why should it aim to develop a
solidarity. within racial lines ? Why should the sense of unity be
encouraged among Germans, and if among Germans, why not
among those citizens who happen to be of English, Canadian,
Russian, or Italian descent?
Equally difficult is it to understand the need of such an
organization for resisting "nativistic encroachments." Long
before the Alliance came into existence, German citizens,
from Michael Hillegas, the first Treasurer of the Continental
Congress, to Carl Schurz, Secretary of the Interior in Hayes'
administration, have been welcomed to the highest offices in
the gift of the people. From the time the Know-Nothing
movement collapsed — a movement which was called into
being in large measure by the separatist ideals of the immi-
grants of 1832 and 1848 — Americans have kept their rjplitics
aloof from racial or religiou.fi extinctions, and those who have
trespassed this unwritten law have received prompt and merited
rebuke.
In estimating the activity of the Germans during the last
eighteen months allowance must be made for the high tension of
feeling produced by the war. Nor must it be imagined for one
moment that the majority of Germans in this country subscribe
to the opinions put forth by the noisy propagandists. This
group, though compact and well organized, forms but a small
fraction of the thirty millions of citizens of German birth or
descent in this country. They represent the laterimmigra tions , —
for the most part those which followed theTormation of the
empire. The official roster of the Alliance may fairly be taken as
representative of its membership, or at least of the controlling
faction in that membership. Of the twelve officers not one can
point to an Americanism more than two generations old. The
majority are foreign-born.
GERMAN IMMIGRATION 135
It is for the descendants of those Germans who fought under i
Herkimer at Oriskany; of those who followed Muhlenberg; of f
those who over the trenches of Yorktown heard the opposing
commands given in their native tongue, and finally saw the
garrison march out to the time of German .music ; of those who
fought under Schurz and Sigel in the Civil War, to rebuke these
prophets of disunion and to turn the aspirations of their country-
men in the direction of true American nationalism. s
B. EMIGRATION FROM SOUTHEASTERN
EUROPE
JEWISH IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES1
SAMUEL JOSEPH, PH.D., COMMERCIAL HIGH SCHOOL, BROOKLYN
THE Jewish immigration has been shown to consist essentially
of permanent settlers. Its family movement is incomparable
in degree, and contains a larger relative proportion as well as
absolute number of women and children, than any other im-
migrant people. This in turn is reflected in the greater relative
proportion as well as absolute number of those classified as
having "no occupation." The element of dependency thus
predicated is another indication of the family composition of the
Jewish immigration. Its return movement is the smallest of
any, as compared both with its large immigration and the
number of total emigrants. The Jewish immigrants are dis-
tinguished as well by a larger relative proportion and absolute
number of skilled laborers, than any other immigrant people.
In these four primary characteristics the Jewish immigrants stand
apart from all the others.
It is with the neighboring Slavic races emigrating from the
countries of Eastern Europe and with whom the Jewish immi-
grants are closely associated that the contrasts, in all these
respects, are strongest. The Slavic immigrants are chiefly male
adults. Their movement is largely composed of transients, as
evidenced by a relatively large outward movement and em-
phasized by the fact that the vast majority of them are unskilled
laborers. An exception, in large measure, must be made of the
Bohemian and Moravian immigrants, who present characteristics
strongly similar to those of the Jewish immigrants.
The division into "old" and "new" immigration brings
out even more clearly the exceptional position of the Jews in
1 Summary and conclusions, of Jewish Immigration to the United States. Chap-
ter VI. Columbia University Studies, 1914.
136
JEWISH IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES 137
regard to these characteristics. Although the Jewish immi-
gration has been contemporaneous with the "new" immigration
from Eastern and Southeastern Europe, and is furthermore
essentially East-European in origin, its characteristic place is
altogether with the "old" immigration.1 Most striking, how-
ever is the fact that in all of these respects — family composition
and small return movement (both indicating permanent settle-
ment) and in the proportion of skilled laborers — the Jewish
immigration stands apart even from the "old" immigration.
Further confirmation may be obtained, in the study of the
characteristics of the Jewish immigration, of the principle
established in the preceding sections that the rejective forces of
governmental oppression are responsible for the largest part of
this immigration. The large family movement of the Jewish
immigration is a symptom of abnormal conditions and amounts
almost to a reversal of the normal immigration, in which single
or married men without families predominate. Even the family
movement of the "old" immigrants may largely be attributed
to the longer residence of their peoples in the United States as
well as to their greater familiarity with the conditions and
customs of the United States. That so large a part of the Jewish
immigrants is composed of dependent females and children creates
a situation of economic disadvantage for the Jewish immigrants,
all the stronger because of their relative unfamiliarity with the
language or the conditions facing them in this country.
Again, the Jews respond slowly and incompletely to the pres-
sure of unfavorable econo*mic conditions in this country. This
was emphasized by the 'almost complete lack of response to the
panic of 1907, as well as expressed in the small, practically un-
changing return movement of the Jews to their European homes.
The pressure upon the Jewish artisans, or skilled laborers,
in Eastern Europe is reflected in the predominance of this class
among the Jewish immigrants to this country. That so useful an
element in Eastern Europe with its still relatively backward in-
dustrial development — a fact that was given express recognition
1 So strongly Was this the case that the Immigration Commission in discussing
these characteristics was compelled to separate the Jewish from the "new" immi-
gration, in order to bring out the essential differences of the latter from the "old"
immigration.
1 38 CHARACTERISTICS
by the permission accorded the Jewish artisans in Alexander
IPs time to live in the interior of Russia — should have been
compelled to emigrate indicates that the voyage across the
Atlantic was easier for them than the trip into the interior of
Russia, access to which is still legally accorded to them.
That the oppressive conditions created particularly in Russia
and Roumania and operating as a pressure equivalent to an
expulsive force does not explain the entire Jewish immigration
to this country is evident from the preceding pages. In a great
measure, the immigration of Jews from Austria-Hungary is an
economic movement. The existence, however, of a certain degree
of pressure created by economic and political antisemitism has
however been recognized. The Jewish movement from Austria-
Hungary shares largely with the movement from Russia and
Roumania the social and economic characteristics of the Jewish
immigration which we have described. A strong family move-
ment and a relative permanence of settlement, especially as
compared with the Poles, and a movement of skilled laborers
must be predicated of the Jewish immigrants from Austria-
Hungary, though undoubtedly not to the same degree as in the
case of the Jewish movements from Russia and Roumania.
It is also clear that the forces of economic attraction in the
United States do not play an altogether passive part in the
Jewish immigration. The very fact of an immigrant-nucleus
formed in this country and serving as a center of attraction to
relatives and friends abroad — a force which increases in direct
and multiple proportion to the growth of immigration — is an
active and positive force in strengthening the immigration
current. This was early understood by the Alliance Israelite
Universelle which had acted upon this principle in the seventies
and had prophetically sought to direct a healthy movement of
Jewish immigrants to this country in the hope of thereby laying
a foundation for future Jewish immigration to this country.
This current, however, once started and growing only by the
force of its increasing attraction, would reflect in its movement
almost Wholly the economic conditions in this country. That so
large a part of the Jewish immigration, and so many of the
phenomena peculiar to it, find their explanation, for the largest
part of the thirty years, in the situation and the course of events
JEWISH IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES 139
in the countries of Eastern Europe leads to the inevitable con-
clusion that the key to the Jewish immigration is to be found
not in the force of economic attraction exercised in the United
States but rather in the exceptional economic, social, and legal
conditions in Eastern Europe which have been created as a result
of governmental persecution.
Reviewing the various phases of the history of Jewish immi-
gration for these thirty years, we are enabled to see more closely
its nature. The study of the immigration, its movement and its
social and economic characteristics, in comparison with those
of other immigrant peoples, has revealed in it a number of dis-
tinguishing traits. In the causes of the emigration of the Jews,
in the pressure exerted upon their movement as reflected in their
rate of immigration, in their family movement, in the permanence
of their settlement, and in their occupational distribution have
been found characteristics which mark them off from the rest
of the immigrant peoples. The number of these characteristics
and the degree in which they are found in the Jewish immigration,
put it in a class by itself.
The facts of governmental pressure amounting to an expulsive
force, and reflected in an extraordinary rate of immigration, in a
movement of families unsurpassed in the American immigration,
the largest part economically dependent, in an occupational
grouping of skilled artisans, able to earn their livelihood under
normal conditions, and in a permanence of settlement in this
country incomparable in degree and indicating that practically
all who come stay — all these facts lead irresistibly to the con-
clusion that in the Jewish movement we are dealing, not with
an immigration, but with a migration. What we are witnessing
to-day, and for these thirty years, is a Jewish migration of a
kind and degree almost without a parallel in the history of the
Jewish people. When, in speaking of the beginnings of Russian
Jewish immigration to Philadelphia, David Sulzberger said : "In
thirty years the movement of Jews from Russia to the United
States has almost reached the dignity of the migration of a
people," he used no literary phrase. In view of the facts that
have developed, this statement is true without any qualification.
This migration-process explains the remarkable growth of the
Jewish population in the United States, within a relatively short
140 CHARACTERISTICS
period of time. In this transplantation, the spirit of social
solidarity and communal responsibility prevalent among the
Jews has played a vital part.
The family rather than the individual thus becomes the unit
for the social life of the Jewish immigrant population in the
United States. In this respect the latter approaches more nearly
the native American population than does the foreign white or
immigrant population. One of the greatest evils incident to and
characteristic of the general immigration to this country is
thereby minimized.
Again, the concentration of the Jewish immigrants in certain
trades explains in great measure the peculiarities of the occupa-
tional and the urban distribution of the Jews in the United
States. The development of the garment trades through Jewish
agencies is largely explained by the recruiting of the material
for this development through these laborers.
These primary characteristics of the Jewish immigration of the
last thirty years will serve to explain some of the most important
phases of the economic and social life of the Jews in the United
States, three fourths of whom are immigrants of this period.
Of all the features in this historic movement of the Jews from
Eastern Europe to the United States, not the least interesting is
their passing from civilizations whose bonds with their medieval
past are still strong to a civilization which began its course un-
hampered by tradition and unyoked to the forms and institutions
of the past. The contrast between the broad freedom of this
democracy and the intolerable despotism from whose yoke most
of them fled has given them a sense of appreciation of American
political and social institutions that is felt in every movement of
their mental life.
THE COMING OF THE ITALIAN1
BY JOHN FOSTER CARR, DIRECTOR, IMMIGRATION PUBLICATION
SOCIETY, NEW YORK
' AT EVER judge a ship from the shore," say the Tuscans, and
1 Nl the contadino, who is fond of proverbs, often quotes this
bit of traditional wisdom when he finds that his wolf was only a
gray dog after all. Hamlet's cloud is not a camel; nor is an
onest workman a shiftless beggar buffoon. The laborer and
not the organ-grinder now represents the Italian in America;
but the popular idea mistakes the one for the other. Thanks to
the secluded ways of Italians, the actual facts of their life among
us are almost entirely unknown. In common with Mexicans and
Jews, they are pilloried by insulting nicknames. They are
charged with pauperism, crime, and degraded living, and they are
judged unheard and almost unseen. These short and sturdy
laborers, who swing along the streets with their heavy stride early
in the morning and late at night, deserve better of the country.
They are doing the work of men, and they are the full equals of
any national army of peasant adventurers that ever landed on
ur shores.
To brand an Italian immigrant with the word "alien" is to
curse him for being unlike ourselves. But when we know who
and what he is, and why he comes to the United States, and what
he becomes after he gets here, we recognize human kinship, and
see what we ourselves should be with different birth and breeding.
One serious misconception starts in a name. It is as misleading
to dub a nation " La tin" as "Anglo-Saxon." Italians differ from
one another almost as much as men can differ who are still of
the same color. Ethnography now makes its classifications
according to cranial formation. Most northern Italians are of
the Alpine race and have short, broad skulls. All southern
Italians are of the Mediterranean race and have long, narrow
1 From The Outlook, February 24, 1906.
141
142 CHARACTERISTICS
skulls. Between the two lies a broad strip of country, in northern
and central Italy, peopled by those of mixed blood. History has
a less theoretical story to tell, and explains the differences that
separate near neighbors, in the north as in the south. If a single
race ever inhabited Italy to form an original parent stock, it has
borne the grafts of so many other races that all sign of it is lost.
For prolonged periods sometimes one part of the land, sometimes
another, and sometimes the whole peninsula and the islands,
have been held in the power of Phcenicians, Greeks, the countless
wild hordes of the North, the Saracens, the Spanish, French,
and Germans. They all came in great numbers and freely married
with native women. In the northeast there is a Slav intermixture,
and a trace of the Mongol. In appearance the Italian may be
anything from a tow-headed Teuton to a swarthy Arab. Vary-
ing with the district from which he comes, in manner he may
be rough and boisterous; suave, fluent, and gesticulative ; or
grave and silent.
These differences extend to the very essentials of life. The
provinces of Italy are radically unlike, not only in dress, cookery,
and customs, but in character, thought, and speech. A distinct
change of dialect is often found in a morning's walk, and it would
probably be impossible to travel fifty miles along any road in
Italy without meeting greater differences in language than can
be found in our English anywhere between Maine and Cali-
fornia. The schools, the army, and the navy are now carrying
the Italian language to the remotest province, but an ignorant
Valtellinese, from the mountains of the north, and an ignorant
Neapolitan have as yet no means of understanding each other ;
and, what is more remarkable, the speech of the unschooled
peasant of Genoa is unintelligible to his fellow of Piedmont, who
lives less than one hundred miles away. A Genoese ship's captain
can understand his Sicilian sailors, when they are talking famil-
iarly among themselves, about as well as an English commander
of a "Peninsular and Oriental" liner can follow the jabbering of
his Lascar crew. Nor can ignorant men from some of the prov-
inces understand the pure Italian. Two classes were recently
held in the Episcopal Church of San Salvatore, in Broome Street,
New York, to teach Sicilians enough Italian to enable them to
use their prayer-book.
THE COMING OF THE ITALIAN 143
The age-long political division of Italy into a number of petty
States preserved all differences and inspired an intense local
patriotism ; nor did the narrow belfry spirit wholly vanish with
the political union of 1870. Relics of it are still found. Ask a
Roman peasant if he is an Italian, and he is as likely as not to
say "No," that he is a Roman; and so with a Genoese or a
Neapolitan. In dislike or indifference toward those from other
parts of the country, the Italian abroad usually seeks those of
his own city or province. In the same way, little circles of friends
are formed in the Italian army and navy. Question a group of
sailors on shore leave from an Italian man-of-war, and you will
probably find that, with perhaps a single exception, they are all
of one place. Ask them how this happens, and they may tell
you, as they have told me, laughing: "Friendship is for those
from the same fatherland"
These profound dissimilarities make sweeping generalities
about Italians impossible. Yet in one point every province is
alike. The poor everywhere are all crushed by heavy taxes for
maintenance of the large army and navy which make Italy a first-
class European power. More serious than the exactions of
the taxgatherer is the long-continued agricultural depression
that has reduced a large part of the south to poverty. Nor is
this all. The peasant's lot is made infinitely worse by an Irish
question that is the blight of nearly all southern Italy, Sicily, and
Sardinia. There are the same huge entailed estates and the
same lazy, reactionary, and absentee landlords. Throughout
large sections great tracts of fertile soil support only one shepherd
or one farmer per square mile. To these idle lands must be added
the vast stretches of barren mountains, and the malaria-infested
fifth of the entire surface of the peninsula. No new territory has
been added to the kingdom, while the population has been in-
creasing within twenty years from twenty-eight and one half
to thirty-two and one half millions — an average density for the
whole country of 301 per square mile. And the excess of births
over deaths amounts to nearly 350,000 a year — the population
of a province. Through whole districts in this overcrowded land
Italians have to choose between emigration and starvation.
A definite economic cause drives the poor Meridionale from his
home, and a definite economic cause and not a vague migratory
144 CHARACTERISTICS
instinct brings him to America. He comes because the country
has the most urgent need of unskilled labor. This need largely
shapes the character of our Italian immigration, and offers
immediate work to most of the newcomers. Almost eighty per
cent of them are males ; over eighty per cent are between the
ages of fourteen and forty-five ; over eighty per cent are from
the southern provinces, and nearly the same percentage are un-
skilled laborers, who include a large majority of the illiterates.
These categories overlap, so that the bulk of our Italian immi-
gration is composed of ignorant, able-bodied laborers from the
south. They come by the hundred thousand, yet their great
numbers are quickly absorbed without disturbing either the
public peace or the labor market. In spite of the enormous
immigration of Italians in 1903 and 1904, the last issue of the
United States Labor Bulletin shows that the average daily wage
of the laborer in the North Atlantic States — the " congested"
district at the very gates of Ellis Island — had increased within
the year from $1.33 to $1.39. And 1904 was not a particularly
prosperous year. Equally significant, in view of the unprec-
edented Italian immigration of the first six months of this year,
is the announcement in the last number of the Bulletin of the
New York State Department of Labor that the improvement
in the conditions of employment has been so marked, and "the
proportion of idle wage-earners has diminished so rapidly, that
the second quarter of 1905 surpasses that of 1902, the record
year."
The demand of the East for labor is first heard by the new
arrival who needs to look for work, and probably a majority of
Italian braccianti never go more than a hundred and fifty miles
away from New York. Immediate work and high wages, and not
a love for the tenement, create our "Little Italics." The great
enterprises in progress in and about the city, the subways,
tunnels, waterworks, railroad construction, as well as the
ordinary building operations, call for a vast army of laborers.
For new and remodeled tenements alone, authorized by the
Building Department between April and June, 1905, the esti-
mated cost was over $39,000,000. This gives one measure of the
demand. A labor leader has furnished another. At a recent
conference, arguing that restriction of immigration would benefit
THE COMING OF THE ITALIAN 145
American labor, he said that an authority in the building trade
had calculated that with immigration suspended, common labor
in New York would be receiving $3 within a year. He had not
calculated the paralysis that such a wage would inflict upon
industry.
Of all that come in response to our national invitation to the
worker, the educated Italian without a manual trade is the
Italian who most signally fails in America. He 'is seen idling
at the cheap restaurants everywhere in the Italian colonies. But
the illiterate laborer takes no chances. He usually has definite
knowledge of precisely where work is needed before he leaves
home. Fifteen thousand immigrants sometimes reach Ellis
Island in a single day. Yet each Italian must earn his living in
some way, and that at once, for he brings no more than eight or
ten dollars with him.
This same inborn conservatism that risks nothing makes of
southern Italians the most mobile supply of labor that this
country has ever known. Migratory laborers, who come here to
work during eight or nine months of the year, and return between
October and December, are a very large part of the annual immi-
gration. They form a stream of workers that ebbs and flows from
Italy to America in instant response to demand ; and yet the
significance of the movement has gone almost entirely unnoticed.
More than 98,000 Italians — laborers and others, but chiefly
laborers — went back to Italy in 1903. In 1904, owing to a
temporary lull in our prosperity and the general business un-
certainty during a Presidential campaign, the demand slackened.
The common laborer, who ordinarily pays a padrone fifty cents as
a fee for employment, was offering as high as five dollars for a
job in the summer of 1904. In the end, more than 134,000 Italians
returned to Italy within the year, and we were saved the problem
of an army of unemployed.
If the ignorant immigrant is a menace, the mobility of Italian
unskilled labor has conferred another blessing upon us, for it is
the very element that contains a large majority of the dreaded
illiterates. The whole number of them who enter the community
thus gives no indication of the number who are permanently
added to our population, and the yearly percentage of their
arrivals since 1901 has fallen from 59.1 per cent to 47 per cent,
I46 CHARACTERISTICS
and is likely to fall still lower. But there is something to be said
on behalf of the illiterates who remain among us. They are never
Anarchists; they are guiltless of the so-called "black hand"
letters. The individual bracciante is, in fact, rarely anything but
a gentle and often a rather dull drudge, who still has wit enough
to say that he knows he cannot be Caesar, and is very well content
to be plain Neapolitan Nicola. Knowledge is power, but an
education gives no certificate of character, and still less does
ability to read and write afford any test whatever either of
morals or of brains. A concrete instance gives a practical proof.
There are more than four times as many illiterates in the general
population of the United States as were found, according to the
last published report, among those arrested in Greater New York
between January i and March 31, 1905 : 44,014 persons were
arrested; of these, only 1175, or a little over 2.6 per cent, were
unable to read or write. The percentage of illiteracy for the
entire United States is 10.6 per cent, and for that of the native
whites alone 4.6 per cent.
The very success of American schools goes far in explaining
the mystery of our exorbitant demand for unskilled labor. In
proportion as they fulfill their mission they are depriving us of
the rough laborer. The boy who is forbidden by the New York
law to leave school until he is fourteen years old and has reached
the fifth grammar grade, later in life does not join a gang that
digs sewers and subways. Such laborers are recruited from the
illiterate, or nearly illiterate — those who have failed in the
beginning of the struggle in which brains count. For our future
supply of the lower grades of labor we must depend more and more
upon countries with a poorer school system than ours.
Lies have short legs, the Florentine tag has it, but the Ital-
ian is still accused of being a degenerate, a lazy fellow and
a pauper, half a criminal, a present danger, and a serious menace
to our civilization. If there is a substantial basis of truth in
these charges, it must appear very clearly in Greater New York,
which is now disputing Rome's place as the third largest Italian
city in the world. Moreover, New York contains nearly
two fifths of all the Italians in the United States, and in propor-
tion to its size it is the least prosperous Italian colony in the
country, and shelters a considerable part of our immigrant
THE COMING OF THE ITALIAN 147
failures — those who cannot fall into step with the march of
American life.
First, as to the paupers. The Italian inhabitants of New York
City number nearly 450,000 ; the Irish, somewhat over 300,000.
In males — the criminal sex — the Italians outnumber the Irish
about two to one. Yet by a visit to the great almshouse on
Blackwell's Island and an examination of the unpublished record
for 1904, I found that during that year 1564 Irish had been
admitted, and only 16 Italians. Mr. James Forbes, the chief
of the Mendicancy Department of the Charity Organization
Society, tells me that he has never seen or heard of an Italian
tramp. As for begging, between July i, 1904, and September 30,
1905, the Mendicancy Police took into custody 519 Irish and
only 92 Italians. Pauperism has a close relation with suicide,
and of such deaths during the year the record counts 89 Irish and
23 Italians. The Irish have always supplied much more -than
their share of our paupers ; but Irish brawn has contributed its
full part to the prosperity of the country ; and the comparatively
large proportion of Irish inmates in all our penal institutions
never justified the charge that the Irish are a criminal race, or
Irish immigration undesirable. That was the final answer to the
Know-Nothing argument !
Nor do court records show that Italians are the professional
criminals they are said to be. Take the city magistrates' reports
for the year ending December 31, 1901 — the latest date for
which all the necessary data are available. At that time, using
Dr. Laidlaw's estimate of additions by immigration to the
population of the city to May i, 1902, there were about 282,804
Irish and 200, 549 Italians in Greater New York. If the proportion
of the sexes remained unchanged from the taking of the census,
there were 117,599 Irish males, and 114,673 Italian. This near
equality of the criminal sex in the two nationalities makes possible
a rough measure of Italian criminality.
In these columns of crime the most striking fact in the Italian's
favor is a remarkable showing of sobriety. During the year,
7 281 "Irish were haled into court accused of "intoxication" and
" intoxication and disorderly conduct," while the Italians arrested
on the same charge numbered only 513. With the exception of
the Russian Jews, Italians are by far the most sober of all
i48 CHARACTERISTICS
nationalities in New York, including the native born. Next,
noticing only offenses committed with particular frequency, the
Italians again appear at a pronounced advantage in : Assaults
(misdemeanor), 284 Irish and 139 Italians; disorderly conduct,
3278 Irish and 1454 Italians; larceny (misdemeanor), 297
Irish and 174 Italians; vagrancy, ic^i^Irish and 80 Italians.
Insanity is here listed with crime, and there are 146 Irish commit-
ments to 35 Italian. Irish and Italians are nearly at an equality
in : Burglaries, 63 Irish and 57 Italians ; and larceny (felony), 122
Irish and 94 Italians. On the other hand, Italians show at the
worst in : Violation of corporation ordinance (chiefly peddling
without a license), 196 Irish and 1169 Italians; and assault
(felony), 75 Irish and 155 Italians. In homicides, quite contrary
to the popular impression, -the Italians are only charged with the
ratio exactly normal to their numbers after taking the average
per 100,000 for the whole city, while the Irish are accused of
nearly two and one half times their quota : Irish 50, Italians 14.
The report for 1903, the last published, after important changes
effected by almost two years of immigration, shows an unchanged
proportional variation : Irish 59, Italians 21.
The one serious crime to which Italians are prone more
than other men is an unpremeditated crime of violence . This is
mostly charged, and probably with entire justice, upon the
men of four provinces, and Girgenti in Sicily is particularly
specified. It is generally the outcome of quarrels among them-
selves, prompted by jealousy and suspected treachery. The
Sicilians' code of honor is an antiquated and repellent one, but
even his vendetta is less ruthless than the Kentucky moun-
taineer's. It stops at the grave. Judged in the mass, Italians
are peaceable, as they are law-abiding. The exceptions make up
the national criminal record ; and as there is a French or English
type of criminal, so there is a Sicilian type, who has succeeded
in impressing our imaginations with some fear and terror.
The Mafia is the expression of Sicilian criminality, and here,
as in Italy, the methods of the Sicilian criminal are the -same.
For some of his crimes he is more apt to have an accompilre
than most other criminals. But there is no sufficient reason for
believing that a Mafia, organized as it often is in Italy, a definite
society of the lawless, exists anywhere in this country. No one
THE COMING OF THE ITALIAN 149
who knows the different Italian colonies well will admit the
possibility of its existence. The authorities at police head-
quarters scout the idea. As with the Mafia, so with the Black
Hand. I went to Sergeant Petrosino, who is said to know every
important Italian criminal in New York. He disposed very
summarily of the bogey :
As far as they can be traced, threatening letters are generally a hoax ;
some of them are attempts at blackmail by inexperienced criminals,
who have had the idea suggested to them by reading about the Black
Hand in the sensational papers ; but the number of threatening letters
sent with the deliberate intention of using violence as a last resort to
extort money is ridiculously small.
It is important that two or three other truths about the
Italian should be known. Like all their immigrant predecessors,
Italians profess no special cult of soap and water; and here,
too, there are differences, for some Italians are cleaner than others.
Still, cleanliness is the rule and dirt the exception. The inspectors
of the New York Tenement-House Department report that the
tenements in the Italian quarters are in the best condition of
all, and that they are infinitely cleaner than those in the Jewish
and Irish districts. And the same with overcrowding. One of
New York's typical "Little Italics" is inhabited by 1075 Italian
families — so poor that only twenty-six of them pay over $19
monthly rent — and yet, when a complete canvass was made by
the Federation of Churches, the average allotment of space was
found to be one room to 1.7 persons. Like the Germans and Irish
of the fifties, our Italians are largely poor, ignorant peasants
when they come to us. But by the enforcement of the recent
law our present immigrants are greatly superior physically and
morally to those of the Know-No thing days. The difference in
criminal records is partly the proof of a better law. The worst
of the newer tenements are better than the best of the old kind,
and every surrounding is more sanitary. Better schools, rec-
reation piers, public baths, playgrounds, and new parks are
helping the Italian children of the tenements to develop into
healthy and useful men and women.
To understand our Italians we need to get close enough to them
to see that they are of the same human pasta — to use their word
1 50 CHARACTERISTICS
-as the rest of us. They need no defense but the truth. In
spite of the diverse character that all the provinces stamp upon
their children, our southern Italian immigrants still have many
qualities in common. Their peculiar defects and vices have been
exaggerated until the popular notion of the Italian represents
the truth in. about the same way that the London stage Yankee
hits off the average American. Besides, as the Italian Poor
Richard says, "It's a bad wool that can't be dyed," and our
Italians have their virtues, too, which should be better known.
Many of them are, it is true, ignorant, and clannish, and con-
servative. Their humility and lack of self-reliance are often
discouraging. Many think that a smooth and diplomatic false-
hood'is better than an uncivil truth, and, by a paradox, a liar
is not necessarily either a physical or a moral coward. No force
can make them give evidence against one another. Generally
they have little orderliness, small civic sense, and no instinctive
faith in the law. Some of them are hot-blooded and quick to
avenge an injury, but the very large majority are gentle, kindly,
and as mild-tempered as oxen. They are docile, patient, faithful.
They have great physical vigor, and are the hardest and best
laborers we have ever had, if we are to believe the universal
testimony of their employers. Many are well-mannered and
quick-witted; all are severely logical. As a class they are
emotional, imaginative, fond of music and art. They are honest,
saving, industrious, temperate, and so exceptionally moral that
two years ago the Secretary of the Italian Chamber of Commerce
in San Francisco was able to boast that the police of that city had
never yet found an Italian woman of evil character. Even in
New York (and I have my information from Mr. Forbes, of the
Charity Organization Society) Italian prostitution was entirely
unknown until by our corrupt police it was colonized as scien-
tifically as a culture of bacteria made by a biologist ; and to-day
it is less proportionately than that of any other nationality
within the limits of the greater city. More than 750,000 Italian
immigrants have come to us within the last four years, and during
that entire time only a single woman of them has been ordered
deported charged with prostitution.
So far from being a scum of Italy's paupers and criminals, our
Italian immigrants are the very flower of her peasantry. They
THE COMING OF THE ITALIAN 151
bring healthy bodies and a prodigious will to work. They have an
intense love for their fatherland, and a fondness for old customs :
and both are deepened by the hostility they meet and the gloom of
the tenements that they are forced to inhabit. The sunshine,
the simplicity, the happiness of the old outdoor ways are gone,
and often you will hear the words, "Non c'e piacere nella vita"
- there is no pleasure in life here. But yet they come, driven
from the land of starvation to a land of plenty. Each year about
one third of the great host of industrial recruits from Italy,
breaking up as it lands into little groups of twos and threes, and
invading the tenements almost unnoticed, settles in the different
colonies of New York. This is a mighty, silent influence for the
preservation of the Italian spirit and tradition.
But there are limits to the building of an Italian city on
American soil. New York tenement houses are not adapted to
life as it is organized in the hill villages of Italy, and a change has
come over every relation of life. The crowded living is strange and
depressing ; instead of work accompanied by song in orangeries
and vineyards, there is silent toil in the canons of a city street ;
instead of the splendid and expostulating carabiniere there is the
rough force of the New York policeman to represent authority.
There is the diminished importance of the church, and, in spite
of their set ways, there is different eating and drinking, sleep-
ing and waking. A different life breeds different habits, and dif-
ferent habits with American surroundings effect a radical change
in the man. It is difficult for the American to realize this.
He sees that the signs and posters of the colony are all in Ital-
ian; he hears the newsboys cry "Progresso," "Araldo," "Bolle-
tino" ; he hears peddlers shout out in their various dialects the
names of strange-looking vegetables and fish. The whole
district seems so Italianized and cut off from the general
American life that it might as well be one of the ancient walled
towns of the Apennines. He thinks that he is transported to
Italy, and moralizes over the " unchanging colony." But the
greenhorn from Fiumefreddo is in another world. Everything
is strange to him; and I have repeatedly heard Italians say
that for a long time after landing they could not distinguish
between an Italian who had been here four or five years and a
native American.
1 5 2 CHARACTERISTICS
Refractory thaugh the grown-up immigrant may often be to the
spirit of our Republic, the children almost immediately become
Americans. The boy takes no interest in "Mora," a guessing
match played with the fingers, or "Boccie," a kind of bowls —
his father's favorite games. Like any other American boy, he
plays marbles, "I spy the wolf," and, when there is no policeman
about, baseball. Little girls skip the rope to the calling of
"Pepper, salt, mustard, vinegar." The "Lunga Tela" is for-
gotten, and our equivalent, "London bridge is falling down,"
and "All around the mulberry-bush," sound through the streets
of the colony on summer evenings. You are struck with the deep
significance of such a sight if you walk on Mott Street, where
certainly more than half of the men and women who crowd every
block can speak no English at all, and see, as I have seen, a
full dozen of small girls, not more than five or six years old,
marching along, hand in hand, singing their kindergarten song,
"My little sister lost her shoe." Through these children the
common school is leavening the whole mass, and an old story is
being retold.
Like the Italians, the Irish and the Germans had to meet dis-
trust and abuse when they came to do the work of the rough
day-laborer. The terrors and excesses of Native Americanism and
Know-Nothingism came and went, but the prejudice remained.
Yet the Irish and Germans furnished good raw material for
citizenship, and quickly responded to American influences.
They dug cellars and carried bricks and mortar ; they sewered,
graded, and paved the streets and built the railroads. Then
slowly the number of skilled mechanics among them increased.
Many acquired a competence and took a position of some dignity
in the community, and Irish and Germans moved up a little in the
social scale. They were held in greater respect when, in the dark
days of the Civil War, we saw that they yielded to none in self-sac-
rificing devotion to the country. Thousands of Germans fought
for the Union besides those who served under Sigel. Thousands
of Irishmen died for the cause besides those of the "Old Sixty-
ninth." "Dutch" and "Mick" began to go out of fashion as
nicknames, and the seventies had not passed before it was often
said among the common people that mixed marriages between
Germans or Irish and natives were usually happy marriages.
THE COMING OF THE ITALIAN 153
From the very bottom, Italians are climbing up the same rungs
of the same social and industrial ladder. But it is still a secret that
they are being gradually turned into Americans ; and, for all its
evils, the city colony is a wonderful help in the process. The
close contact of American surroundings eventually destroys the
foreign life and spirit, and of this New York gives proof. Only
two poor fragments remain of the numerous important German
and Irish colonies that were flourishing in the city twenty-five
or thirty years ago; while the ancient settled Pennsylvania
Dutch, thanks to their isolation, are not yet fully merged in the
great citizen body. And so, in the city colony, Italians are
becoming Americans. Legions of them, who never intended to
remain here when they landed, have cast in their lot definitely
with us ; and those who have already become Americanized, but
no others, are beginning to intermarry with our people. The mass
of them are still laborers, toiling like ants in adding to the wealth
of the country ; but thousands are succeeding in many branches
of trade and manufacture. The names of Italians engaged in
business in the United States fill a special directory of over five
hundred pages. Their real estate holdings and bank deposits
aggregate enormous totals. Their second generation is already
crowding into all the professions, and we have Italian teachers,
dentists, architects, engineers, doctors, lawyers, and judges.
But more important than any material success is their loyalty
to the nation of their adoption. Yet with this goes an undying
love for their native land. There are many types of these new
citizens. I have in mind an Italian banker who will serve for one.
His Americanism is enthusiastic and breezily Western. He has
paid many visits to the land of his birth, and delights in its music,
art, and literature. He finds an almost sacred inspiration in the
glories of its history. Beginning in extreme poverty, by his own
unaided efforts he has secured education and wealth; by his
services to the city and State in which he lives he has won public
esteem. Perhaps no other Italian has achieved so brilliant a
success. But as a citizen he is no more typical or hopeful an
example of the Italian who becomes an American than Giovanni
Aloi, a street-sweeper of my acquaintance.
This honest spazzino of the white uniform sent a son to Cuba
in the Spanish War; boasts that he has not missed a vote in
1 54 CHARACTERISTICS
fifteen years ; in his humble way did valiant service in his political
club against the "boss" of New York during the last campaign.
And yet he declares that we have no meats or vegetables with
" the flavor or substance " of those in the old country ; reproaches
us severely for having "no place which is such a pleasure to see as
Naples," and swears by "Torqua-ato Ta-ass" as the greatest of
poets, though he only knows four lines of the Gerusalemme. Side
by side over the fireplace in his living room are two unframed
pictures tacked to the wall. Little paper flags of the two countries
are crossed over each. One is a chromo of Garibaldi in his red
shirt. The other is a newspaper supplement portrait of Lincoln.
A man like Giovanni Aloi, yearning for the home of his youth,
sometimes goes back to Italy, but he soon returns. Un-
consciously, in his very inmost being, he has become an American,
and the prophecy of Bayard Taylor's great ode is fulfilled.
Their tongue melts in ours. Their race unites to the strength of
ours. For many thousands of them their Italy now lies by the
western brine.
THE NEWER SLAVIC IMMIGRATION: SINCE 1880
EMILY GREENE BALCH
CHANGES IN COMPOSITION OF SLAVIC IMMIGRATION
WITH the coming of the eighties the original contingent of
Bohemians and Poles began to be overlaid by a much
larger volume of newcomers differing in various important re-
spects from the old. In the first place, the later Slavic immi-
grants were largely of nationalities previously little represented
in America. Since up to 1899 the American immigration data
are classified only by " country of last permanent residence"
and not by nationality, it is not possible to. get any precise
measure of this change in the make-up of the Slavic stream.
Neither can the beginning of the movement to America among
the newer immigrant nationalities — Slovaks and Ruthenians,
Slovenians and Croatians, Bulgarians, Serbians and Russians —
be dated in any hard and fast way.1 Apparently, as already
said, the impulse spread from the Poles in Germany eastward
to their brothers in Galicia in the latter part of the seventies,
and to the Poles in Russia somewhat later. The Slovaks began
to come in considerable numbers in the early eighties, and the
Ruthenians at about the same time.
These three nationalities converge in the eastern Carpathian
district, and more or less interpenetrate one another ; and
emigration to America having once started, it was natural
that so contagious a movement should spread through the whole
Carpathian group. Moreover, among all these peoples trade
is largely in the hands of the Jews, who are apt to have inter-
national affiliations, and it seems often to have happened that
1 Discussion of the origin and spread of the emigration movement among the
first four of these nationalities will be found in the appropriate chapters in Part I,
of " Our Slavic Fellow-Citizens " but for convenience it is resumed here as a whole.
155
1 56 CHARACTERISTICS
some enterprising Jew first among his fellow townspeople became
aware of the land of promise across the Atlantic, explored and
reported on it, and thus set the stream of immigration flowing.
The South Slavs began to come to America somewhat later.
Though individual Slovenians came very early, as already men-
tioned, it was not till about 1892 that the movement became
noticeably important among them. In the Croatian group, the
Dalmatians, sailors and wanderers, had sent now and then an
immigrant from very early times ; but it was not till toward the
middle of the nineties that Croatians, and especially Croatians
from the country back of the coast, began coming in numbers.
Serbians and Bulgarians are still more recent comers, numerous
only since 1902 or so, but growing rapidly. As to Russians, of
66,000 in the last eleven years (1899 to 1909 inclusive), over
nine tenths came after 1902 and over two thirds in the last three
years.
CAUSES AND INDUSTRIAL CHARACTER
The grounds of the earlier immigration may be said to have
been, roughly, the opportunity of acquiring farming land cheaply,
if not gratuitously, and in a less degree the desire for the greater
political and religious freedom promised by America. In the
course of time both these grounds lost their importance. As the
supply of desirable land to be had on easy terms diminished,
this incentive to immigration grew weaker, and lessening political
unrest in Western Europe allayed the other. On the other hand,
the great industrial development of the United States, following
after the Civil War, and especially after the hard times in the
seventies, meant a great increase in the demand for labor. The
Teutonic element of the older immigration, to which the Bohe-
mian was very similar, was not looking primarily for wage jobs,
but for independence, especially the independence of the farm
owner. The same was largely true of the British immigrants,
English, Welsh, and Scotch. Besides, neither belonged, in any
sense, to the class of cheap labor. The Irish alone were not
enough to supply the demand for "hands," and French-Cana-
dians, while an important element in New England, have not
been numerous elsewhere. Italians and Slavs, proving most
available, were consequently called in to meet the want.
THE NEWER SLAVIC IMMIGRATION 157
These newer groups of Slavic immigrants were mainly drawn
from more primitive districts than the earlier groups, districts
where the population was less in touch with Western Europe.
They generally came, not intending to take up farms and settle,
but hoping to earn money to send back to their homes, to which
they planned to return. To this end they sought the best-paid
work that they could find in mines, foundries, factories, and else-
where. A large proportion of both the old and the new comers
were peasants, that is, small independent farmers ; but among
the new, the proportion of men possessing trades was less, and
mere laborers were more numerous.
IMMIGRATION INDUCED BY EMPLOYERS
Historically, the American origin of the more recent immigra-
tion, so far as such a movement can have a specific origin, seems
to have been the desire of certain Pennsylvania anthracite mine
owners to replace the employes that they found hard to deal with,
and especially the Irish, with cheaper and more docile material.
Strikes were a frequent source of friction, the Molly Maguire
affair had caused great bitterness, and it was natural that
employers should be on the lookout for new sources of labor
supply. In a number of places these raw recruits of industry
seem to have been called in as the result of a strike, and there
probably were plenty of instances of sending agents abroad to
hire men or of otherwise inducing labor to immigrate either under
contract or with an equivalent understanding. These proceedings
were, of course, perfectly legal up to 1885, when the law for-
bidding the importation of labor under contract was passed.
One story is that the first comers were brought over for a
certain mine operator at Drifton, Pennsylvania, through an
"Austrian" foreman. I have never been able to verify the story
nor to date it. I was interested to run across a Slovak hatter
in Bartfield, Hungary, who emigrated about 1880, and told of
having gone "to Drifton, where there was an Austrian foreman,"
who, however, does not appear to have had anything to do with
his emigrating.1
1 Industrial Commission, Vol. XV (1901), page 32.
1 58 CHARACTERISTICS
Mr. Powderly, formerly Commissioner of Immigration, testified
before the Industrial Commission :
I believe in 1869, during a miners' strike which was then in prog-
ress, a man who was connected with one of the coal companies made
the statement that in order to defeat the men in their demands it
would be necessary to bring cheap labor from Europe, and shortly
after that, miners were noticed coming to the anthracite region in
large numbers from Italy, Hungary, Russia, and other far-off lands.
It will be seen that Mr. Powderly mentions a comparatively
early date at which the importation of workmen under contract
was in no way forbidden. But even then such a course, while
legal, would have been unpopular among workingmen, and prob-
ably always more or less sub rosa. This may be one reason why
it is very hard to get any definite information about these
matters ; but indeed, on both sides of the water, the doings of less
than a generation ago are surprisingly hard to ascertain.
INFLUX INTO THE ANTHRACITE FIELDS
In Pennsylvania the great early goal appears to have been, as
already indicated, the anthracite coal region of the eastern part
of the state. The Poles seem to have been the first to come, and
right on their heels came the Slovaks. An informant from Hazle-
ton, a district where they appeared quite early, gave me, in 1904,
the following account of their first arrival :
They began to come about twenty years ago; a few stray ones
came earlier. Nowadays not so many are coming, but at one time
they came in batches, shipped by the carload to the coal fields.
When they arrived they seemed perfectly aimless. It was hard for
them to make themselves understood, and they would be sent to a man
who kept a saloon on Wyoming street. They would land at the
depot, and at the beginning they would spend the first night on the
platform. I have quartered many in my stable on the hay. One
pulled out a prayer-book and read a prayer. They were mainly
Catholics, but some were Protestants, though we did not know that
till later. Sometimes they would go up into the brush and build a
fire and sleep, or if it was too cold, just sit there on the ground. As
soon as they had earned something, or if they had a little money, they
would go to the baker's or get meat of any cheap sort, regardless of
THE NEWER SLAVIC IMMIGRATION 159
its condition. Many were so poor that they came in old army suits,1
their belongings all in one big bundle. At first it was only men that
came.
MASSACHUSETTS FARMERS CALL IN POLES
An interesting account of the coming of the first Poles to the
Connecticut valley farms of Massachusetts tells how here, as in
Pennsylvania, the influx was in direct .response to a demand on
the part of employers : 2
It was about twenty years ago that the Poles were first brought to
the Connecticut Valley. In the particular section under consideration,
the farmers could not hire men and boys to work on their farms, or
girls and women to assist in the household work. The demand was
pressing. Charles Parsons of Northampton, who has since died, then
a pushing, aggressive farmer, conceived the idea of going to New York
and Castle Garden and there securing enough of the strong and sturdy
immigrants to meet the demand for farm and domestic labor.
The business grew rapidly. Mr. Parsons made weekly trips.
Agents at New York told the incoming immigrants as pleasing stories
as was necessary to make the Pole see the Connecticut Valley farms
as the promised land. Being new and green to America, the Pole at
first paid the highest price, and was given the small end of the bargain.
The agent in New York had to have a fee for his trouble. Mr. Parsons
had to advance the money to bring the Pole to the farm, and, of course,
he had to have a profit also. This meant, as a rule, that the immigrant
was practically mortgaged for $10 when he commenced work. It
was, of course, to be taken out of the wages to be paid him for his
labor. The contract was not particularly bad for either the farmer
or laborer. The men came first, and were followed by women and
children. How many Mr. Parsons took from New York cannot be
stated. The number must have been in the thousands.
Next Francis Clapp of South Deerfield took up the business.
Mr. Clapp is one of the substantial farmers of the Mill River
district in South Deerfield. He tells his story in this way :
I began with the Poles in 1889. I continued it for six years and then
it was no longer profitable. The Poles had learned by this time to
1 Some of the peasant costumes might easily be mistaken for some sort of uni-
form.
2 Boston Daily Globe, June 29, 1902.
160 CHARACTERISTICS
find their own places. In many cases their relatives, who had been
working in this country for several years, sent for their friends.
They secured places for them. During the six years I secured places
for more than three thousand. I sent them to places in each of the six
New England states, men and women, boys and girls. I treated them
well. I found many of them suspicious, but they were " square" as a
rule. The yarns told them by some of the New York agents and by
others who desired to make money out of them, at times caused
trouble. One day I brought eighteen to South Deerfield. The New
York agent had told them that they had friends in the vicinity. Of
course I knew nothing of this. I did not have an interpreter, and we
could not talk. They realized they had been deceived, and they
determined to go back to New York. I succeeded in keeping only
three. The other fifteen walked back to New York. They were
entirely without money. They were frightened, and went in a drove.
I had a license from the town to transact the business. I secured
a girl as an interpreter who spoke seven different dialects. She could
also do as much work in the house as any girl we ever had. She went
back to New York after a time, married, and went to work in a cigar
factory. While they were waiting for places if such happened to be
the case or for other reasons they were quartered at my farm.
They seem, when they first come, to be entirely without nerves.
They sleep well under all conditions. Their appetites are enormous.
Of course they are given only coarse food. I have known the men to
eat from ten to fifteen potatoes at a meal, together with meat and
bread. They are very rarely sick.
They make good citizens. Almost without exception they are
Roman Catholics, and faithful to their obligations. They are willing
to pay the price to succeed. That price is to work hard and save.
They do not keep their money about them. They place it in the
savings banks. When I first went to New York to get them it cost
the farmer nothing. The Pole had to pay the fee for the New York
agent, the money which I advanced to pay his fare, and other expenses,
and the profit I made. Then, as they grew to know the custom better,
the Pole paid half and the farmer half. Now the farmer has to pay
the whole when the men come from a distance.
As a rule, the men are hired for a season of eight months, the
time of outdoor work on the farms. At first the contracts, on an
average, were about $80 for the eight months. The Poles were given
little money, only as they needed it. They had to work off the mort-
gage of $10 which they had contracted. They really needed little
money. They were fed and lodged, and, as a rule, they had sufficient
THE NEWER SLAVIC IMMIGRATION 161
clothing, for they had little occasion to dress finely. There was a
chance, too, that if they had money they might leave the former with-
out help, and so the settlement came at the end of the contract period.
Roman Skibisky is a young Pole who is quite a daring speculator
as well as farmer. He lives in what was formerly one of the fine old
mansions on the broad main street of Sunderland. For several years
he has been plunging more or less in onions. Last fall he made his
heaviest strike. All told, he purchased about 6500 bushels of onions.
They cost him on an average less than forty cents a bushel. He kept
them until this spring and sold them at an average of $1.10 a bushel.
Taking out the cost of cold storage and insurance he netted more
than $4000 on an investment of about $2600. At one time he could
have sold his entire holdings at $1.25 a bushel. His success has not
given him a big head. He works barefooted in the field this season
just as though he had not made a rich strike. When Mrs. Skibisky
was asked what she likes in this country she replied, "Me happy
here." They have three children.
" FIRST COMERS"
Just as in emigration districts in Europe one hears of more
than one " first man to go to America," so on this side there
doubtless have been many "first comers." Sporadic and exper-
imental trials of the land of the dollar, both induced and sponta-
neous, have opened new fields to immigrants. As a spider
throws his first thin thread across, and, his anchorage secured,
gradually thickens and confirms it, so each immigrant who gets
an economic foothold strengthens the bridge between the coun-
tries and draws others over. Thus among the Slavs the streams
of immigration, once set flowing, have made paths for them-
selves, and constantly increased in volume. As one labor market
becomes supplied, new openings are sought and found.
DISTRIBUTION DETERMINED BY DEMAND FOR LABOR
The character of the later Slavic influx naturally produced
a territorial distribution quite different from that of the older
- movement. The new immigrants, guided in the main by the
chances of good wages rather than of cheap land, rapidly found
their way to the points where there was a demand for their
undaunted though unskilled labor. Once within the country, no
162 CHARACTERISTICS
contract labor law impeded the employers' agents, and men were
drafted off to different places according as hands were needed
in mine, coke oven, rolling mill, lumber camp, or, less typically,
factory. Consequently, while the immigrants of the preceding
period had mainly gone to the farming country lying north and
west of Chicago, these later comers, answering primarily the
call for labor in mines and related industries, found their center
of gravity in Pennsylvania, and spread thence through the
industrial districts, especially the industrial districts of the
middle West, and above all to the various mining and metal-
working centers throughout the country.
FARMING
But though during this period agricultural settlement1 has
been overshadowed, it has by no means been lacking, especially
among the Bohemians and the Poles. It has taken place mainly
in the group of states west of the Great Lakes ; but in the Connect-
icut Valley, and elsewhere in the East, the number of
"Polanders" who have bought land is also considerable. I have
been surprised to see in a Bohemian paper in New York the space
devoted to advertisement of Connecticut and other farms.
CITY COLONIES
This period has also seen the formation of large urban colonies
of different nationalities, in various cities large and small,
colonies which often have very curious and interesting distinctive
features.2 Such a movement as this later Slavic immigration is,
1 Cf. Chapter XV of " Our Slavic Fellow-Citizens " for a discussion of this
phase of settlement.
2Cf., for the Bohemians of Chicago, Mrs. Humpal-Zeman's account in "Hull
House Maps and Papers," and Dr. Alice Masaryk's article, "The Bohemians in
Chicago," in Charities, Vol. XIII, pages 206-210 (December 3, 1904). On Bohe-
mians in New York see Dr. Jane E. Robbins, "The Bohemian Women in New
York," ibid , pages 194-196. In the same issue of Charities Miss Laura B. Garret
has "Notes on the Poles in Baltimore," and Miss Sayles an article on "Housing
and Social Conditions in a Slavic Neighborhood," which deals with Jersey City.
Another study of conditions among the Slavs of Jersey City by Miss E. T. White has
been published by Whittier House. Of these various accounts those by the two
Bohemian women first mentioned are much the most valuable to those who are
seeking true understanding of the life of such a group as is there studied.
THE NEWER SLAVIC IMMIGRATION
163
however, hard to deal with historically. It has little coherent
history, and what it has is still too much in the making to be
easily studied or presented. . . .
NUMERICAL INCREASE CENSUS DATA
NATIVES OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY, BOHEMIA, POLAND, AND RUSSIA, 1880,
1890, AND 1900. [UNITED STATES CENSUS]
NATIVES OF
1880
1890
1900
Austria
Bohemia
Hungary
38,663
85,361
I I ^26
123,271
118,106
62 A.1Z
275,907
156,891
I4C 714.
Poland
48 Z<7
14.7 4.4.O
•28? 4.O7
Russia
35,722
182,644
423,726
Total
210 82Q
622 806
i 18$ 64.$
Total per cent of foreign born
32
6 8
I -2 A
The period since 1880 has seen not only changes in the racial
and economic character of the Slavs coming to the United States
but a vast increase in their numbers. A rough indication of this
is the large share of the foreign-born population that comes to
be made up of natives of Austria-Hungary (including Bohemia),
Poland, and Russia. As shown in the Table above, in 1880
they were 3.2 per cent of the total foreign-born ; in 1890, 6.8 per
cent ; in 1900, 13.4 per cent. In absolute numbers they increased
in the twenty years over sixfold, from something over 200,000 to
nearly 1,400,000.
If we consider, not population as shown by the census, but the
count of arriving immigrants, the increase is even more striking.
In the last decade of our previous period, 1871-1880, Austria-
Hungary and Russia1 sent us 4.5 per cent of all immigrants ; in
the decade 1900-1909 they sent 'almost 43 per cent.
1 Austria- Hungary presumably includes Bohemia and Austrian Poland (Galicia) ;
Russia includes Russian Poland. That is, all Poland except German Poland is
included. It must of course be remembered that these groups of immigrants are
very mixed racially.
164 CHARACTERISTICS
IMMIGRATION STATISTICS
Up to 1899 the best material that we have consists of the
figures, supplied by the immigration authorities, as to the
countries from which immigration is drawn. After that year
the immigration figures are also classified according to "races
and peoples" l and these not only give us direct information,
but throw light on the racial significance of the figures for the
different geographical contingents, which are all that we have
to go by for the years before 1899. We find that during the
decade 1899-1908, the immigration from Austria-Hungary was
six tenths Slavic. Since there is no reason to think that this
proportion would be less in earlier years, and since for the same
decade 69 per cent of all Slavic immigrants came to us from Aus-
tria-Hungary (and for earlier periods this proportion would
doubtless be still larger), the Austro-Hungarian contribution to
our immigration may be taken as a rough index of the incoming
Slavs. . . .
The year 1880, which we have taken as our landmark, shows
a sudden rise, the numbers of that year being almost three times
those of the preceding. From this time onward there is an in-
crease, which is, however, sharply checked in 1893 by the de-
pression then beginning. It was not till 1900 that the numbers
reacted from this to their level of 1892. The culminating point
up to date was reached in 1907, after which the recent panic
again lessened the influx, and started a new period of decline,
though a brief one, since the figures for 1909 indicated a re-
covery from 168,509 to 1 70, 1 9 1.2
CLASSIFICATION BY "RACES AND PEOPLE"
The change spoken of above by which the immigration data are
presented by racial and national groups instead of by country
of last permanent residence only, is a great boon to the student
of this subject. The classification was made by one of our best
1 For a criticism of this classification, see below, "Our Slavic Fellow-Citizens,"
page 247.
2 The years are not calendar but fiscal years ending June 30, so that e.g. 1907
means July i, 1906, to June 30, 1907.
THE NEWER SLAVIC IMMIGRATION 165
known ethnologists, the late Professor Otis T. Mason, but it is
probably impossible to make one that shall be at once practical
and quite logical. This one is open to several minor objections.
Distinct nationalities like Croatians and Slovenians, Bulgarians
and Serbians, are lumped together, and at the same time special
place is given to a group which is merely a territorial division ;
namely, Dalmatians, Bosnians, and Herzegovinians (who are
Servo-Croatians) .
It is hard, however, to explain or excuse, the practice of the
immigration authorities of including Hebrews in the Slavic
group, as was done, for instance, on page 21 of the 1906 report
of the Commissioner General of Immigration. In the same report
the Lithuanians and Rumanians are also included as Slavic, but
this is less objectionable as these peoples, although they never
count themselves as Slavs nor are so counted by others, and
although they speak non-Slavic languages, probably have much
Slavic intermixture, and considerably resemble, in culture and
habits, the neighboring Slavic peoples. The same might be
said of the Magyars, despite their Mongolian type of speech.
The Jew, on the contrary, even the Polish or Russian Jew, is
not only remote in blood and speech from all Slavs, but moves in
another world of ideas and purposes, and plays a very different
economic part both in Europe and America. To put him into
one class with Slavic immigrants in a table of racial divisions
can only create confusion.1
The years 1899 and 1908 are the earliest and latest for which
full information as to immigrants by races is available. In
these ten years the country admitted over one and a half mil-
lion Slavs, many of whom, however, had been here before or have
since returned. It is not uncommon for a Slovak to have made
the trip to America eight times, in which case he appears in our
figures as eight immigrants.
1 For a further consideration of this subject, see Boeckh : " The Determination
of Racial Stock among American Immigrants." Quarterly Publications, Ameri-
can Statistical Association, Vol. X, pp. 199-221 (December, 1906).
166 CHARACTERISTICS
IMMIGRATION BY COUNTRIES AND PEOPLES
Statistics show that for the period between the years 1899 and
1908, .69 in 100 of Slavic arrivals came, as already said, from
Austria-Hungary, 25 per cent more from Russia, 2 per cent each
from Germany and the territory Bulgaria-Servia-Montenegro,1
per cent from Turkey, and only i per cent from all other coun-
tries combined.
The immigration from Bulgaria, Servia, and Montenegro is
almost wholly Slavic (96 per cent), that from Austria nearly
two thirds such (61 per cent), while the streams from Russia and
Turkey are not far from one third Slavic, and that from Germany
is one tenth Slavic.
Our previous study of conditions in Europe, combined with
the American figures, indicates that we have received during the
decade 1899-1908 the following groups from the countries
named:
I. From Austria-Hungary :
Bohemians (Chekhs) from Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia
(83,698).
Poles from Galicia (about 335,651).
Slovaks from northern Hungary (about 320,047).
Ruthenians from Galicia and northeastern Hungary (about
102,036).
Slovenians from the Austrian province of Carniola and adjacent
parts (number unknown).1
Croatians from Croatia-Slavonia, Istria, Dalmatia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, and southern Hungary (number unknown).1
Serbians from the same territory (certainly less than 28,677).
II. From outside Austria-Hungary :
The largest of the three Polish contingents, that from Russia
(369>973)-
The smallest of the three Polish contingents, that from Germany
(32,388).
Russians proper, from Russia (53,454), only between three and
four per cent of the total of almost a million and a half immi-
grants that Russia has sent us in the decade.
THE NEWER SLAVIC IMMIGRATION 167
Serbians (beside those from Austria-Hungary) from Serbia, Mon-
tenegro, Bulgaria (?), and Turkey (?) (number unknown).1
Montenegrins are Serbians from Montenegro.
And lastly, Bulgarians from Bulgaria and Turkey, which latter,
I suppose, here means Macedonia (number unknown).
A large part of the Slavic immigrants that come from outside
the five main fields ((i) Austria-Hungary, (2) Russia, (3) Ger-
many, (4) Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro, and (5) Turkey in
Europe) are those who give their last permanent residence as
British North America or the United States. The latter rubric
was, however, provided only in the 1906 tables, in which it occu-
pies a large space (1059 Poles, for instance, gave the United
States as their last country of permanent residence).
RACIAL GROUPS
Turning now to the consideration of the separate national
streams, it has been noted that the great numerical predomi-
nance is with the Poles, who make up 44 per cent of the Slav
total for the decade. The little people of the Slovaks make the
second group, with almost one fifth of the whole. Third comes
the mixed group of Croatians and Slovenians, which the data
do not allow us to separate, and which together make over 16
per cent. The other groups are all much smaller. The Bohe-
mians, who were the most important group of Slavic immigrants
in the earlier years, and even in 1880 were not far from twice as
numerous in the country as natives of Poland, sank during this
period to one twentieth of the whole; that is, to less than the
little group of the Ruthenians and to scarcely more than those
newcomers, the Serbians and Bulgarians.
Even within the period the emphasis has been shifting. Within
the Slavic group, as in European immigration in general, the
spread of the movement has trended south and east. Taking
1907, the year of the high tide of immigration, and comparing
1 Unfortunately the immigration data are so grouped as to make it impossible
to distinguish Croatians and Slovenians from one another, or Bulgarians and
Serbians from one another, though these are all separate nationalities with distinct
languages.
1 68 CHARACTERISTICS
this with 1899, we see that the different groups have increased at
very different rates. The Bulgarian-Serbian group rose from
under 100 to 27,000 or to two hundred and ninety-one times as
many. The related group from Dalmatia and Bosnia increased
twentyfold; the Ruthenians, starting with 1400, rose to over
24,000, multiplying more than seven times; the Russians in-
creased their numbers nearly ten times. The older immigration
groups also increased, though at a less rate; Bohemians and
Poles and the Croatian-Slovenian group all about fivefold, while
the Slovaks increased less than threefold, and reached their
maximum in 1905.
"ALIEN DEPARTURES" AND NET INFLOW
We must, however, be on guard in using any immigration totals
not to overlook the fact that they represent gross, not net,
arrivals. We must allow for the numbers of immigrants returning
from the United States. In the appendix to the report of the
Commissioner General of Immigration for 1908, an estimate is
attempted of "Alien departures/' with the result that the ac-
cepted immigration figures should be reduced as follows :
1899 by 41 per cent 1904 by 37 per cent
1900 by 31 per cent 1905 by 34 per cent
1901 by 28 per cent 1906 by 26 per cent
1902 by 21 per cent 1907 by 22 per cent
1903 by 21 per cent 1908 by 73 per cent
That is, while the total immigration for 1908 was 782,870,
the real, net immigration was only 209,867, or not far above
a quarter as much, — and for this one year the figures are not
estimated but actual. What then are we to suppose in regard
to the Slavic immigration? What proportion of their total of
nearly 1,700,000 during the decade 1899-1908 represents a net
addition to our numbers ? We may get a side light on this by
studying the successive immigration reports, which give the
number of immigrants of each nationality who have been in
the country previously. Statistics present percentages for two
years (for 1906 and^ for purposes of comparison, for 1900),
and I find to my own surprise that the English, Irish, and
THE NEWER SLAVIC IMMIGRATION 169
Scotch have the largest proportion and thus appear to come
and go the most, and that the Scandinavians and Germans also
stand high. The Slovaks have nearly as high a rate of those
returning as the Irish, in both years ; other Slavs have smaller
proportions. Jews, as one might expect, come to stay, and go
back and forth less than any other class noted.
From these figures we see that while the Slavs, except the
Slovaks, are (if the data are correct) less migratory than the
average, there is still a large deduction to be made for those
entering the country more than once, and in addition to this,
for the large though hitherto unknown number who leave and do
not return.
Another indication of the discrepancy between immigration
totals and net additions to the population is given by a comparison
of the figures for immigration with the United States census.
Foreign countries sent us, in the decade 1891-1900, 3,687,564
immigrants. The census of 1900, however, shows a gain of
foreign born since 1890 of less than a third as many (1,091,729).
Part of this difference, but not by any means all of it, is accounted
for by deaths among our foreign-born population.
C. EMIGRATION FROM ASIA
JAPANESE IMMIGRATION1
H. A. MILLIS, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
THE one thing really settled is that there shall not be a free
flow of laborers from such a high pressure country as Japan
to the low pressure United States for the mere pecuniary gain
of those who come. No country can afford indefinitely to
provide the opportunity for draining off an excess of population
found elsewhere — the diminished numbers to be quickly re-
placed by a high birth rate. There are few in the United States
who will question the wisdom of the principle of restriction rather
vigorously applied and most of the Japanese people freely con-
cede it. Japan has for some time been acting upon that prin-
ciple in restricting emigration directly or indirectly, that is, by
way of Mexico and Canada, to the United States. She has ap-
plied it also in dealing with Chinese laborers who came to her
own shores.
With reference to this matter I wish not to be misunderstood.
Until conditions materially change, vigorous restriction of the
free movement of laborers from Japan must be taken for granted.
It must not be taken for granted, however, because of any alleged
inferiority of the Japanese race, for it is not an inferior one.
Nor must it be taken for granted because of dependency, disorder,
ignorance, or undesirability attaching possibly to some indi-
viduals, for there has been no problem of any moment connected
with any of these. Nor, again, must it be taken for granted
because of gambling or related evils found in some places, for
the communities in which such evils have arisen are chiefly to
blame for them. Nevertheless, in a practical world restrictions
must be taken for granted, because of evils for which no one
1 Printed by The American Sociological Society and The Committee of One
Hundred, Federal Council of Churches in America, August, 1915.
170
JAPANESE IMMIGRATION 171
in particular was to blame, but connected with the earlier influx
and perhaps inherent in a comparatively free movement of immi-
grants from Eastern Asia to such a country as the United States.
One of the evils experienced and which is indissolubly con-
nected with any considerable immigration of Asiatic laborers
is the conflict of economic standards. We have witnessed it
in industry when employment was taken by the Asiatics as
section hands and shop and mill laborers at lower wages than
others were paid. Seldom, it is true, was the underbidding
through the acceptance of lower wages great. The primary
reason for the difference of only about twenty or twenty-five
cents per day in wages was that the slightly lower sum was
sufficient to absorb the numbers available. The wages accepted
in Hawaii and elsewhere would indicate that the rates accepted
here might have been lower if need be to be effective in securing
employment. But when the immigration was greatest, industry
was expanding, there was a shortage of labor at the wages then
current, and the contractors, working in connection with board-
ing-houses and other sources of supply, could place their Japanese
laborers at the slight discount indicated. Yet that the immi-
gration of Japanese laborers and the organized search for employ-
ment previous to 1908 was accompanied by effective under-
bidding is an established fact. In spite of the expanding industry,
a check was placed upon the increase in wages and improvement
in labor conditions. That organized labor was the first to pro-
test against the competition was only to be expected, for organized
labor stands for the maintenance and improvement of standards.
Laborers without organization, also to the best of their lim-
ited ability, stood opposed to any impairment of their working
conditions.
But the Japanese laborers were employed much more exten-
sively in agriculture than in industrial pursuits such as those
just mentioned. They accepted the places vacated by the aging
and disappearing Chinese, maintained the old Asiatic labor econ-
omy, and extended it to new branches of agriculture as they
developed in California and to the sugar industry as it gained
an important place in several of the western states. They found
employment chiefly as migratory hand laborers in the growing
of intensive crops, where much of the work is of the stoop-over
172 CHARACTERISTICS
variety and unattractive to white men. They easily found
place in such occupations because they were organized by and
easily secured through bosses, were easily shifted from place to
place as needed, were easily housed and self-subsisting, and,
to begin with, always accepted lower wages than white men,
whether paid by the day or by the job. They, of course, by
reason of their availability, cheapness, and fair efficiency, had
not a little to do with the rapid advance of branches of agriculture
of an intensive type and of farming communities where the supply
of labor was not at all commensurate with the needs of the highly
specialized operations most profitable if labor was readily avail-
able on favorable terms. Indeed by Asiatic labor not a few of
the out-of-the-way places were brought to that state of develop-
ment where they could be settled by others. In other words,
their labor was to a considerable extent supplementary to that
of others. Moreover, it must be admitted that their presence
made more employment for laborers in some occupations in
which they did not themselves compete for work. Yet it is true
that there was considerable displacement of other laborers be-
cause of the easy terms on which the Japanese could be obtained.
The disappearance of the Chinese was hastened by their compe-
tition, and in some instances white laborers as well were dis-
placed. The Japanese were effective competitors and generally
underbid for work. Moreover, others tended to withdraw as
certain agricultural occupations became tainted. My investi-
gations have led me to the conclusion that the economic effects
of the employment of the Japanese in agricultural work were
(i) to promote certain kinds of farming and to hasten the develop-
ment of the natural resources, (2) to cause an advance in land
values, (3) to retard the subdivision of large holdings and to
maintain a certain amount of capitalistic agriculture, (4) to retard
the advance in wages of unskilled laborers and to extend the old
labor economy, and (5) to give the Japanese a pivotal place in
the labor supply, especially in many California communities.
As this pivotal place was secured less room was left for the em-
ployment of others in certain occupations and they sought work
elsewhere.
Most of the Japanese who came to us brought only their hands
and sought to better their economic condition as laborers in some
JAPANESE IMMIGRATION 173
of the lower and more distasteful walks of life. With time,
however, a relatively large number became shopkeepers or
tenant or landowning farmers. Few races have made the transi-
tion as quickly as the Japanese, and in their shopkeeping and
farming, differences in standards corresponding to those in wage-
employment became evident.
The number of Japanese farmers, most of them tenant, in the
West in 1909, was perhaps not far from 6000. Many of their
4000 holdings were not farms, but small plots, so that the com-
bined acreage held by them was perhaps approximately 200,000,
about three quarters of it in California. Though this acreage
seems to be of little consequence where millions of acres sparsely
settled are found in the West, it had perhaps tripled in five years,
and the details connected with the rapid progress thus shown
were significant of what might be expected to happen were
large numbers admitted to the country, and gave rise to fear
for the future — especially in those localities in which most of
them found place. More recently they have continued to make
substantial progress as farmers. It is my opinion that with a
large immigration of Asiatics, and especially of Japanese, much
of the land would rapidly come into their possession and impor-
tant changes in the composition and life of agricultural communi-
ties settled in would occur. With an immigration problem, an
important land problem would inevitably develop. The reasons
for this conclusion may be briefly presented.
Numerous things have combined to place a premium on shop-
keeping or farming by the versatile and efficient Japanese. The
Japanese are ambitious, and the immigrants of every ambitious
race tend strongly to rise in the adopted country to the position
they occupied in their native land. This is especially true of the
Japanese, who find the wage relation distasteful. With them to
be a wage earner is to show inferiority; to be economically
independent shows merit. Again, their advance as employees
to the higher occupations has been made difficult, and this has
virtually forced many to leave the wage-earning class in order
to advance at all. Most of them have been employed in gangs
and limited to work done by gangs. A third important factor
is found in the fact that they are a home-loving people and wish
to have their families with them. Ordinarily this has been
1 74 CHARACTERISTICS
difficult unless they become shopkeepers or farmers. If laborers,
they were expected to be rolling stones, and to live under such
conditions as to make a desirable family life impossible.
Again, because of the great respect attaching to agriculture
in Japan and the highly developed agricultural arts there found,
in so far as labor and scientific application are concerned, the
Japanese have been the more eager to obtain possession of farms.
But most important of all has been the place they have occupied
in the agricultural labor supply, especially in California.
It is a general fact that the land tends to fall into the posses-
sion of the race employed as laborers, if the race is a capable
one. It has been only a slight change from the employment of
Japanese laborers under a "boss" to share tenancy where the
landowner provided most of the equipment, did the work with
teams, advanced the wages of the employees, managed the
business in all of its details, sold the produce and collected the
selling price, and then shared this with the tenant after all bills
were paid. Cash tenancy, with liberal advances and the rent
collected out of the receipts from crops sold, differs little except
that more of the risk is taken by the tenant. To the landowner,
however, either arrangement has had the distinct advantage
of interesting the "boss" and obtaining with a greater degree
of certainty his cooperation in securing laborers as needed and
in supervising them at work. Most of the tenant farming by
Japanese in the growing of grapes and deciduous fruit in Cali-
fornia and in growing sugar beets everywhere has grown out
of the fact that the Japanese worked under a "boss" and occu-
pied a dominant place in the labor supply required for taking
care of the crop. As some landowners leased their holdings and
secured an advantage in the labor market, there was the more
reason for others to do so.
Again, the Japanese, like the Chinese before them, have had
an advantage over other races, as competitors for land, in Cali-
fornia especially, because they could be easily and cheaply pro-
vided with shelter. If not the bunkhouse, then a corresponding
shelter would suffice ; and if a new structure was required, it was
frequently built by the tenant with the privilege of removing
it upon the expiration of the lease. The landowner and his family,
if they desired, as in most cases they have, could occupy the farm
JAPANESE IMMIGRATION 175
residence and reserve such part of the farm as was desired. The
members of no white race could be had as tenants unless the
family residence was let with the land ; or cottages, superior to
those which have generally been provided, were erected at the
landowner's expense for their use. With respect to the kind of
housing required, the Asiatics have competed with others for
the possession of land on the basis of a lower standard. It has
been an important factor in explaining the advance of the
Japanese as tenant farmers.
The Japanese, like the Chinese before them and now, have
been willing to pay higher rents than others for land — such
high rents in fact that the owner has frequently found it more
profitable to lease his land than to farm it on his own account.
That the Japanese and Chinese can afford to pay a relatively
high rent is explained in part by the fact that their efficiency
and the kinds of crops grown by them will bear it ; in part by
the fact that they have a different standard of application;
and in part by the fact that the income in prospect from farming
need not be so large as that expected by most other farmers.
The Asiatic farmer expects to work hard and for long hours ;
the Japanese is usually assisted in garden or field by his wife,
if he has one ; the opportunities for employment other than as an
unskilled laborer have been limited, and as a result of careful
and efficient growing of intensive crops his return per acre is
ordinarily a large one. But whatever the reason or reasons, the
most nearly universal fact in the West has been that the Asiatics,
with the possible exception of German Russians in Colorado,
have been the highest bidders for land. This fact is undisputed.
In some localities the sums paid have been ruinously large, so
that an organized effort has now and then been made by the
Japanese organizations to limit the amount paid. It is equally
true that they have paid correspondingly high prices for the
comparatively small amount of farm land purchased.
Another factor of some importance in explaining the progress
of Japanese as farmers is the ease with which they, like the
Chinese and the Italians, form partnerships to carry on their en-
terprises. Of still more importance has been the aid extended by
commission men and others interested in the marketing of the
crops. Liberal advances have been made on crops in order to
1 76 CHARACTERISTICS
control the marketing of them. Fruit shippers have frequently
served as middlemen in the leasing of land, and here and there
have leased land themselves and then sublet it to Asiatics in
order to control the marketing of the crops.
And, finally, one not unimportant fact entering into the situa-
tion has been the reclamation and reduction of raw land by the
Japanese tenants. Numerous instances are found in Washing-
ton and Oregon and along the Sacramento River here in Cali-
fornia. It should be stated, however, that, for the most part,
the lands acquired by the tenants have been those improved
by others, though when acquired they were perhaps devoted to
a more intensive purpose.
Thus, numerous factors have cooperated to explain the rapid
progress of farming by the Japanese. In passing, some of the
community effects should be noted, for they are of importance.
Japanese farming has been accompanied by a tendency
toward a rise in land values and the keeping of large holdings
intact as profitable investments. It has placed a slight premium
on absentee-landlordism, and, though it is not true that the earlier
elements in the farming population have been driven out of any
community in California, and though it is true that Americans
have continued to move into localities where the largest per-
centage of Asiatics were settled, it has tended to deflect the tide
of settlers moving west to other localities. Moreover, in a few
cases the acreage of certain crops has been greatly increased by
the Japanese farmers until prices have broken and others have
tended to withdraw from their production.
In this way the thesis is maintained that with a large immi-
gration of Japanese laborers, a land problem would develop.
The comparatively small influx of earlier years has in fact resulted
in one third of the land about Florin, one half of the orchards
in the Vaca valley, a still larger percentage of the orchards about
Newcastle, and most of the farms above Sacramento along the
American River coming into their hands and important commu-
nity effects have been witnessed. The situation in several other
localities differs from that in those mentioned only in degree.
The progress of the Japanese as shopkeepers has also been
rapid, especially since 1904. By 1909 they were conducting some
four thousand business establishments in the West, these giving
JAPANESE IMMIGRATION 177
employment to approximately one sixth of those gainfully
occupied. At present, perhaps one fifth of the Japanese in the
West are so engaged, as principals or as their employees.
As branches of business, contracting and the supply house
came early, of course. So did the boarding house, the barber
shop, the restaurant, and the places of amusement, for the mem-
bers of this race were usually discriminated against by others
and it was necessary for them to supply their own needs. But
sooner or later they began in some places to compete with gro-
ceries, restaurants, clothes cleaning and tailor shops, and the
like, for so-called American trade, and the competition was
usually on unequal planes. With lower wages bills incurred
in the conduct of their shops and with a lower standard of neces-
sary profit, considerable cutting of prices accompanied the
progress made by them. Their laundry prices were effectively
lower than those charged by their competitors, and this was
equally true in most of the competitive trades. Moreover, the
shifting of population incidental to the settlement of newcomers
in restricted localities was in some cases even more important
than the cutting of prices. The formation of colonies thus added
its weight to the underselling with the result that though the
number of their establishments was relatively not large and most
of their shops quite small, established businesses and profits of
rivals suffered in some cases. When such was the result, it was
regarded as an evil by those injuriously affected, and opposition,
in some cases organized opposition employing fines and boycotts
and other methods of defense which appear drastic to the out-
sider, developed at new points.
Thus, especially before immigration was greatly restricted
in 1907, competition in unskilled labor, in some branches of
petty business, and in certain branches of farming for which
many localities in the West are peculiarly well suited, has taken
place in unequal terms. There has been a conflict of standards.
While the labor has been helpful in developing the country be-
cause cheap, efficient, and easily secured; while it has been a
great convenience in other cases, as in domestic service ; and while
profitable branches of agriculture have been caused to grow
rapidly, the disturbing effects of even such a small immigration
as has given us a total population of Japanese, old and young,
1 78 CHARACTERISTICS
of less than a hundred thousand, must be regarded as outweigh-
ing the good. The immigration of large numbers to settle on the
Pacific Coast and to compete on unequal terms because of differ-
ences in standards must be regarded as undesirable from an eco-
nomic point of view, unless one holds — as no one can successfully
maintain — that the economic welfare of the country depends
more upon the most rapid industrial progress, exploitation of
resources, and amassing of wealth than upon an improvement in
the lot of those at or near the bottom of the economic scale, with
relatively low land values, and the settlement of land along
lines more nearly normal according to the American standard.
The fundamental economic problem is to be emphasized.
Yet the problem has not been merely an economic one. Because
of clannishness on the part of the Japanese and the tendency of
others to limit their relations with them to business affairs, col-
onies have tended to develop and the newcomers to be encysted
in rather than be assimilated to the population. In spite of
considerable capacity on the part of the Japanese for assimila-
tion, it has not been taking place in desired degree, partly because
of the strong appeal made by native institutions to a people
living in colonies, partly because of the failure or refusal of
others to do their share in a process which requires the coopera-
tion of the several elements in the population. In the speaker's
opinion a difficult problem in connection with assimilation has
developed. Even with limited numbers the situation is such that
assimilation of those here is now unlikely to occur in desired
degree. With large numbers it would not take place.
Naturally, considerable friction has developed, chiefly because
of differences in economic standards, and though immigration
has undoubtedly caused an expansion of commerce between the
two countries, trade relations at one time were seriously im-
periled. All of these things, the increase of dissatisfaction due
to misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and organized agitation,
the obvious difference in color, and the extreme solicitude of the
Japanese government for the welfare of its subjects and its
treatment of them as pseudo-colonists, have tended to produce
a new race problem. Had matters continued for some years
longer as they were ten years ago, such a problem would inevi-
tably have resulted.
JAPANESE IMMIGRATION 179
Thus it is maintained that there cannot be a free flow of
laborers from Japan to the western part of the United States.
But, happily, for seven years, with the gentlemen's agreement
faithfully observed by the Japanese government and with the
prohibition of re-migration from Hawaii, Mexico, and Canada,
we have had and now have no immigration problem in so far
as incoming Japanese laborers are concerned. The statement
is true that "with unswerving constancy and fidelity the Japanese
government has maintained the gentlemen's agreement by
which it undertook to suppress the immigration of laborers to
the United States." It has done more. By regulating immigra-
tion to neighboring countries, the difficult border problem has
ceased to be of importance. There can be no reasonable doubt
that we have in the agreement the most effective exclusion
arrangement, and the United States owes a debt of gratitude to
the Japanese government for its cooperation in effecting it. The
number of Japanese laborers in the country is slowly diminish-
ing, and the problems involved in the earlier situation are grad-
ually settling themselves. Of underbidding in the labor market
there is now practically none ; the conflict of standards in petty
business has become largely a matter of the past ; and no serious
or extensive problem connected with the land can develop.
The feeling of opposition is less intense than it was. Neverthe-
less there are unsettled problems. They should be settled and
the policy of drifting along with some harassing legislation
should not be permitted to continue if we can agree upon the
direction positive efforts should take.
With no particular immigration to complicate the situation,
what are these unsettled problems to which consideration should
be given ? One is found in- the gentlemen's agreement as a method
of control; others are found in connection with the treatment
of immigrants who are here or who may be admitted. These
two questions or groups of questions may be considered in turn.
Though the gentlemen's agreement and the President's order
relating to the indirect immigration which accompanied it have
served well as a method of restriction, the agreement has come
in for considerable adverse criticism. Approaching the matter
from different angles different groups have advocated new immi-
gration legislation to replace it. First of all, a vigorous agitation
i8o CHARACTERISTICS
for an exclusion law applying to all Asiatics has been carried on
for years. It antedated the adoption of the agreement and has
not died away since it became effective. Much of its force is
found in the widespread but erroneous belief that the agreement
is not effective as a restrictive measure, in the fear that it might
cease to be effective, and in the feeling that the right to control
immigration to the country is a sovereign right which should
be exercised, not compromised, by treaty or agreement. In the
least offensive form this demand would find expression in a
general immigration law which would admit only those who
are eligible to become citizens by naturalization. Admission
and the possibility of becoming citizens should go hand in hand,
but exclusion in this way raises the additional question as to
the soundness of the discrimination now involved in our naturali-
zation law about which something will be said presently. But,
in so far as Japanese immigration is concerned, it seems to me
that there is at present no problem to be solved by exclusion
legislation, whatever form it might take. An exclusion law
modeled after the Chinese exclusion act would be illogical when
the existing agreement is more effective than any law of that
character would be. It could solve no problem and it is illogical
to enact any law unless there is a problem to be solved by so
doing. The Japanese government has on more than one occasion
expressed its willingness to continue the present agreement, and
it would be unjust to enact an exclusion law so long as she is
willing and capable of limiting the issuance of passports to would-
be immigrants. Moreover, to enact such a law as long as the
Japanese government faithfully observes the agreement entered
into in 1907 would be too serious an affront to a people jealous
of its honor and determined to command the treatment due a
first-class nation. To enact an exclusion law of any kind would
be illogical, unjust, and an affront to Japan.
On the other hand, some would remove the restriction which
now obtains. In Japan there seems to be some restiveness
under the agreement and a limited amount of feeling that it
was a temporary measure to tide over an emergency and that it
has accomplished its object. A smaller number of persons on
this side, interested in cheap labor, would be glad to see the bars
let down. But to grant an unrestricted immigration under our
JAPANESE IMMIGRATION 181
present immigration law in order to meet the wishes of a minority
in Japan and a small number in this country who wish cheap
labor would be unwise for reasons already set forth. It would
be out of harmony with the forward movement to which we are
devoting so much effort. If the agreement is to be replaced by
law at all, it should be replaced by a new immigration law of
the general nature of the measure advocated so brilliantly by
Dr. Gulick.
Dr. Gulick's plan is best stated by himself. But, briefly put,
his suggestion is that the number of independent immigrants
admitted from any country, or of any race or mother tongue,
in any one year should be limited to, say, 5 per cent of the
number of immigrants from that country already here and nat-
uralized and the American-born offspring of the same stock.
A system of registration would be worked out for the adminis-
tration of the plan. All who secured admission unlawfully or
who were not law-abiding would be deported.
The general effect of a measure shaped in this way would be
to bring the control of all immigration under one law and to get
rid of the Chinese exclusion act with its invidious distinctions,
the strained and unsatisfactory interpretation of the present
law in dealing with the East Indians, and perhaps to end the
movement to enact an exclusion law applying to the Japanese.
It would not limit immigration from the northwestern European
countries unless under new conditions it should tend to expand
much beyond its dimensions in recent years ; it would materially
limit the more or less induced immigration of recent years from
southern and eastern Europe, and would not materially affect,
for the time being, the number of Chinese, Japanese, Koreans,
and East Indians coming directly to our shores.
Were Dr. Gulick's plan applied to the figures given in the
census of 1910, it would admit annually into the United States,
including Hawaii, to begin with, a maximum, the excepted classes
of wives, children, etc., not counted, of some 1200 or 1300
Japanese and about noo or 1200 Chinese immigrants. These
figures, it would appear, are somewhat larger than of the corre-
sponding classes admitted in recent years but the difference to
begin with would not be material. With time the basic number
to which his 5 per cent would be applied would increase because
i82 CHARACTERISTICS
of a considerable number of Japanese who would become nat-
uralized if given the opportunity his plan calls for, and because
of the few thousand born annually in this country. Thus the
plan would make possible a cumulative immigration.
It was partly because of these cumulative figures, partly
because of the administrative difficulties connected with a census
the results of which were to be employed in this way, and partly
because of the inducement held out to seek naturalization so as
to increase the numbers which might be admitted, that I have
elsewhere suggested a modification which in its essence would
admit definite numbers arrived at in Dr. Gulick's manner, these
numbers being based upon the census returns of 1910, but obtain-
ing indefinitely unless waived by order properly issued in any
case where the motive for emigration was found in political or
religious persecution.
Thus, as has already been stated, under this plan the issues
involved in the trans-Atlantic and the trans-Pacific immigrations
would be joined, and reasonably so, for there has been a problem
of large numbers in the so-called "newer immigration." What
the situation will be after the present war is not clear ; we can
only guess, but there is the possibility of large numbers once the
work of reconstruction has been completed and the weight of
the inevitable tax burden is felt. The best students of the sub-
ject of immigration — those who can look beyond things merely
personal to things in their collectivity, are generally agreed that
radical restriction has been needed. They agree with the recent
Immigration Commission that we have had "an oversupply of
unskilled labor in the industries of the country as a whole, and
a condition of retarded improvement with some deterioration
of labor conditions which demanded legislation restricting the
further admission of unskilled labor." They are generally
agreed, moreover, that this problem is closely connected with
the fact that more than four fifths of the European immigration
has recently been from the southern and eastern countries, which
have the lowest standards, and the immigrants from which are
most congested in their occupations and residence as compared
to the distribution of the native-born. All agree that in the case
of the "newer immigration" there are greater differences in
institutions and customs than in the case of immigrants from
JAPANESE IMMIGRATION 183
northwestern Europe to be overcome in the process of assimila-
tion. Most students are agreed that the south and east Euro-
peans taken as a whole are less sensitive than the northwest
Europeans to the American environment, and that a situation
has developed in the industrial centers of the East in which
assimilation has proceeded in halting and uncertain fashion and
out of which numerous problems of local government, adminis-
tration, and institutions have developed. Some argue that a
wider distribution is all that would have been required, but it
is probably true that it would have served to lower temporarily
the content of the labor reservoir and then to increase the inflow
from abroad. If so, high birth rates would continue the inflow
indefinitely. A problem of dependency was developing out of
the influx, and a proper use of the data available shows that
some prominent elements in the immigration from the southern
countries complicate and make more difficult the problem of
maintaining law and order. Before the war our biggest problem
was found in the trans-Atlantic immigration. Would it not be
well to safeguard ourselves against its possible return?
It was stated a while ago that under the plan suggested there
would be no material change in the trans-Pacific immigration.
This was based upon the assumption, however, that the present
effective bar against re-migration of Asiatics from Hawaii to
the mainland would be retained or a desirable substitute found
for it. Without such a bar an influx like that of ten years ago
would take place because of the inferior conditions which are
found in the Islands. It would result in an acute labor problem
in the Islands and an undesirable situation here. I should not
advocate any plan which would involve a re-migration from
Honolulu to the mainland.
Legislation along the lines suggested, supported by effective
restrictions upon re-migration. of the kind mentioned, while leav-
ing the numbers admitted not materially different from those
during the last few years, would relieve the Japanese government
of the embarrassment of the agreement in a way forced upon
it and the criticism of those of its subjects who maintain that
it was adopted only to save Japan's face and was expected
to be temporary. Moreover, it would safeguard the situation
in the event that the position of the government should be
1 84 CHARACTERISTICS
changed by growing democracy. It would meet the position of
our own people who maintain that the right to control immigra-
tion is a sovereign right and that this should be exercised, not
compromised. But most important of all, it would disabuse
many of our people of the erroneous impression that many labor-
ers are actually being admitted, or, in the absence of strong
opposition displayed, would be admitted, to the United States,
and would go far to prevent discrimination by law and otherwise.
My investigations have convinced me that there is a widespread
feeling that many in some way or other are admitted. Others
feel that in the absence of organized opposition, the agreement
would not be effectively administered.
Much of the opposed legislation has not been directed at seri-
ous problems but has appealed because anti-Asiatic and because
it was felt to be necessary in order to prevent an influx of new
immigrants. A measure of the kind suggested should go far to
relieve the situation in so far as connected with mistaken views
of what is actually occurring and with the apprehension of what
might take place. Moreover, it would not stand in the way of
literacy or other selective tests if they should be desired.
Thus, it is maintained that restriction of immigration in gen-
eral is needed. If proper provision is made for those persecuted,
the restrictions imposed should discriminate in their effects
but not in terms against the races of South and East Europe.
They should discriminate in their effects, but not expressly,
still more against immigrant laborers from Asia, who without
restriction are the cheapest and frequently the best organized
and have the most injurious effects in competition, who institu-
tionally and in thought and in mode of life have more to be
overcome in assimilation, who are handicapped by an obvious
difference in color, and who, moreover, find a natural stopping-
place on the Pacific Coast, so that the effects of their immi-
gration would be concentrated upon a limited territory. The
plan suggested is believed to have merit in that it is restrictive,
is general and non-discriminatory in form, would discriminate
only reasonably in its effects, would correct false impressions
with reference to Japanese immigration, and would not stand
in the way of such individual selective tests as might be consid-
ered desirable.
JAPANESE IMMIGRATION 185
Coining to unsettled problems relative to the treatment of
Japanese residing in the United States, one of the most serious
is found in the political disability under which they labor. At
present Japanese, Chinese, and other eastern Asiatic subjects,
because neither white nor black, are ineligible to become Ameri-
can citizens by process of naturalization. Some of the western
Asiatics stand in the shadow of doubt. Though the disability
under which all save the Chinese rest, is not the result of dis-
criminatory legislation directed against them, but merely inci-
dental under a law given shape many years ago and interpreted
by the courts, the invidious distinction between races has come
to be regarded by the Japanese as " hurtful to their just national
susceptibility," and the reasonableness of the law was officially
raised in the long-drawn-out correspondence over the Cali-
fornia land law. Certainly the political disability has opened the
way for discriminatory legislation of the kind just mentioned.
Moreover, the Japanese feel that it is unjust to withhold from
them rights which foreigners may enjoy in Japan and which the
Japanese themselves have in Canada. They naturally desire
equal treatment under the law.
As a matter of principle, all aliens admitted to this country,
regardless of race, should be admitted to a full partnership in
our institutions as soon as they as individuals are properly pre-
pared to exercise their rights and are willing to accept the
responsibilities which must go hand in hand with rights.
The reasons assigned by those who oppose an amendment
of the naturalization law so as to permit the Japanese
admitted to become citizens do not seem to me to be suffi-
cient to support their case. It must be admitted of course
that the Japanese have much of medieval loyalty to their
native government. Rapid strides in economic matters have
not as yet greatly affected the concept of the state held
by those who have not emigrated. Yet it is undoubtedly
true that most of those who have decided to settle here per-
manently have had their mode of thought considerably
changed, and it is probably true that those who sought the
privilege of citizenship would accept its responsibilities in
pretty much the same degree as they have been accepted by
some of our European-Americans who have immigrated from
1 86 CHARACTERISTICS
countries where the attitude toward the state is not materially
different from that in Japan.
Of course a Japanese vote might develop, but, if it did, it
would not be unique in our political history. In any event the
number of votes would be small. This might not be true in
Hawaii, however, where the Japanese and Chinese constitute
a majority of the population. But this raises the question as
to the terms on which citizenship should be conferred. Under
a proper naturalization law only a comparatively small percent-
age of the aliens residing there could become naturalized.
In advocating an amendment of the naturalization law so
that it shall not discriminate against any race, I would not advo-
cate a mere extension of the present law. Though the abuses
under it are not so great as they once were, in many places its
administration is little short of a farce. We cannot be said to
have in operation any well-defined requirements always and
everywhere to be met by those who seek citizenship. We hold
citizenship too cheap and pay dearly for it. The law should
be administered by specialized naturalization courts, and citizen-
ship should be conferred only upon those who can read and
write English understandingly, who know the structure of and
principles underlying our government, and who have an accept-
able knowledge of our history. But the law should be changed
so as to make all who possess these qualifications eligible, and
provision should' be made to enable immigrants of all races to
meet the tests.
Thus I would advocate a general naturalization law based
upon individual merit and not at all upon the matter of race.
Such a law would be based upon good principle, would remove
all contested cases growing out of doubtful eligibility, would
tend to prevent discriminatory legislation, and would undoubt-
edly do more just now than anything else to further harmonious
relations with the people across the Pacific which unites as well
as divides us. At the same time it may be observed that the
time will soon come when the number of native-born Japanese
citizens will be as large as the number who could qualify for
citizenship granted on proper terms. Their attitude as citizens
will depend to a considerable extent upon the rights enjoyed by
their fathers. The objections to such a law, extending rights
JAPANESE IMMIGRATION 187
enjoyed by whites and blacks to races of a different color, can be
easily exaggerated — especially if it is adopted along with a
general restrictive immigration law. That they may easily
be exaggerated is indicated by the fact that while we have for-
bidden the naturalization of Chinese in this country, those who
gained citizenship in Hawaii at an earlier time are generally
regarded as a good class of conservative voters.
With an amendment of the naturalization laws of the kind
suggested, the California and Arizona land acts would cease to
be effective for they merely place limitations upon those ineligible
to citizenship. It is my opinion that they were mistakenly
adopted and were unjust, impolitic, and unnecessary. Yet,
I would not be understood to maintain that in California there
was not a problem in some communities closely connected with
permanent tenure of the land — largely because of the settlement
of Japanese in colonies. Nor do I wish to be understood as
maintaining that were the prohibition of land ownership rendered
ineffective, no local problems would develop. There is a problem
connected with an extensive colonization and a partial assimi-
lation which must be solved if confusion and discord are to be
avoided and right relations maintained.
Representing a very different civilization, clannish in unusual
degree, seeking much the same thing, and discriminated against
and more or less avoided by most of the other elements in the
population, of course the majority of the Japanese have settled
in restricted localities and are more or less colonized. Colonies
have their advantages in meeting the needs of a people in so far
as they remain foreign. But unfortunately the very existence
of the colony makes assimilation difficult, tends to give its mem-
bers inferior standing, and to cause the locality to be less desir-
able for residence by others. With the colony the full comple-
ment of Japanese institutions appears, association is chiefly
with members of the one race, the learning English is retarded,
and the native bonds loosen slowly in spite of the fact that the
Japanese are very sensitive to certain parts of their environment.
In the absence of colonies, Americanization appears to proceed
fairly rapidly, and no important community effects are to be
noted. Livingston affords a case in point. In that community
there has been no conflict of standards and no important
i88 CHARACTERISTICS
colonization and the situation is normal according to American
standards. Though the white residents may state that they would
prefer families of their own color, the Japanese are well received
and have good standing in the community. But unfortunately
there seems to be no way in which the colony can be attacked
directly. Time and more rapid assimilation must undermine
it if it is to disappear.
As has already been stated, with any large immigration it is
believed that assimilation of the Japanese would not take place.
The problem would be complicated, as it has been in the past,
by friction and discrimination. With a narrowly restricted
immigration, however, friction over the clash of economic stand-
ards has tended to diminish and eventually discrimination will
perhaps disappear. Certainly much should be said for an edu-
cational campaign to remove misunderstanding so that its dis-
appearance will be hastened.
Of course the Japanese are being assimilated. Those who
return to Japan after some years spent in the United States,
find the situation difficult if not intolerable and frequently return
here to reside permanently. Yet the problem of assimilation is
present, and in interest of present and future relations it should
be attacked vigorously. It calls for much more effort than has
been as yet put forth. Though the Japanese themselves have
done more than any other race to provide facilities for teaching
the English language, more extensive facilities should be pro-
vided as a part of an internal immigration policy. There should
be cooperation between the school authorities and the Japanese
association of each locality, and night schools should be provided
for the adults. The Christian mission churches are doing much
of value, but the provision for carrying forward their work is
not adequate. Without passing judgment upon the relative
merits of different religions for different peoples, it may be said
that nothing save the use of a common language seems to be of
more value than the spread of Christianity in the process of
assimilation of the Japanese. Its importance has appealed to
me more and more as I have watched the changes going on in
different communities. It is not too much to say that here at
home we have the best opportunity to support needed mission-
ary work, to be done of course along the lines upon which that
JAPANESE IMMIGRATION 189
best done proceeds. After the process of assimilation has taken
place to a certain extent, the native-born element will do much
to hasten it if it is not prevented by discrimination from occupying
the normal place it will wish, provided the older elements do not
prove to be too conservative, and in so far as they control the
situation, bring them up as Japanese.
With the clannishness natural to the Japanese, the respect
for their elders, the differences representing diverse civilizations
to be overcome, and the situation which obtains, considerable
time will be required to make much headway even with small
numbers. The progress made will depend largely upon the degree
of cooperation between the diverse elements in the community.
The question should be raised whether the organizations of the
Japanese should not be less official in their aspects, less shaped
as though the country was to be colonized and exploited for
gain, and be conducted more than they generally are with refer-
ence to securing the adoption of American standards. The ques-
tion should be raised, also, whether something cannot be done to
secure a more general observance of Sunday, and to give women
the place in the family and the family life we expect in the United
States. However much it may be needed, the general practice
of having the women gainfully occupied in men's work in the
field, cannot but alienate the native element and give the Japan-
ese lower standing in the communities in which they reside.
When a people is admitted to the country, their presence imposes
obligations upon the native population. We have been neglectful
in this matter. But when admission is secured, it imposes an
obligation upon the newcomers to give heed to the normal
standards of the country to which they have been admitted.
Both the Asiatic and trfe white races are on trial in the West.
The final outcome is important. Will the white races, when their
institutions are safeguarded by a narrowly restricted immigration,
give necessary opportunity and cooperation and avoid evils and
friction ? Will those admitted retain their clannishness and seek
chiefly to make gain rather than strive to become Americans?
/
CHINESE IMMIGRATION
UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION COMMISSION
THOUGH a few thousand Armenians are found in the West,
most of them in Fresno County, California, and perhaps
a thousand Syrians in Los Angeles, most of the Asiatic immi-
gration has been from eastern Asia — China, Japan, Korea,
and India. For reasons already given elsewhere, no special
investigation was made of the Chinese. Such data as were
obtained were secured incidentally to the investigation of other
races and of industries in which Chinese are or have been em-
ployed. A few points concerning their number, occupations,
and related matters may be commented on briefly, however,
chiefly for convenience in discussing Japanese immigration,
upon which most emphasis was placed in the investigation made
in the Western division.
According to the census, the number of Chinese in the con-
tinental United States in 1900 was 93,283. Of these, 88,758
were males and 4525 were females. In all probability the number
of adult males was somewhat larger than the figure reported, as
it is almost impossible to enumerate all but a negligible percentage
of the foreign-born males living under such conditions as were
at that time found among the Chinese. It is impossible to esti-
mate the number of persons of that race now in the United States,
as many have died or returned to China since 1900, while others
have returned from China to this country, and men, women,
and children of the eligible classes to the number of 19,182 have
been admitted to the United States between July i, 1899, and
June 30, 1909. Moreover, it is acknowledged by those familiar
with the administration of the law that some foreign-born have
secured admission as " native sons," while others have been
smuggled across the Canadian or the Mexican boundary. How-
ever, it has become evident from the investigation conducted
190
CHINESE IMMIGRATION 191
by the Commission that of the number of Chinese in all of the
cities of the West, many are occupied in growing potatoes and
the coarser vegetables. Such interests are usually combined
with general farming, however.
The Portuguese are excellent farmers, and frequently, while
improving their land, obtain two or three crops from the same
field in the course of the year. In their thrift, investment of
savings in more land, in the character of their housing and stand-
ard of living, they are very much like the Italians. In some
instances, however, their housing is of a distinctly better type.
The one important difference between the two races, besides
the kind of crops usually produced, is found in the fact that the
Italians cooperate in leasing land, while the Portuguese are very
individualistic and seldom rent or own land in partnership.
Because of this circumstance and the fact that the members of
this race, unlike the Asiatics and German-Russians, have not
been induced to settle upon the land as a solution of the labor
problem, the Portuguese, in spite of their perseverance in their
efforts to establish themselves as independent farmers, have
usually made slower progress in this direction than the Italians,
Japanese, and German-Russians.
Few of the other south European immigrants are engaged in
agriculture. A few Greeks have become tenant farmers, but
without much success. About Watsonville, California, a compar-
atively large number of Dalmatians have engaged in apple
growing, but this instance perhaps stands alone. In fact, immi-
grants from the south European countries, and the east Euro-
pean as well, Italians, and Portuguese excepted, have come to
the West too recently to have established themselves. More-
over, in most cases the number of transient laborers is large
as compared to the number who have come to this country to
make their permanent home. The principal exception to this
is found in the German-Russians, an agricultural people, who
have come to this country to escape heavy taxation and military
service and in search of better land. Within some twenty years
several thousand have come to Fresno County, California, where
they have worked at unskilled labor to begin with, though a com-
paratively large number have been able to establish themselves
as farmers, which is the goal practically all have in view. The
1 92 CHARACTERISTICS
acreage controlled by them is roughly estimated at 5000. In
Colorado there are perhaps between 800 and 900 .tenant and
landowning farmers of this race, occupying for the greater part
holdings in excess of 60 acres and not infrequently much larger
tracts. This farming has developed within the last ten years
and has been incidental to the growth of the beet-sugar industry.
The sugar companies have brought large numbers of families
of this race from Nebraska to do the hand work involved in grow-
ing sugar beets. From laborers doing the hand work on a piece
basis they have rapidly advanced to tenant and to landowning
farmers. Their advance is in part to be ascribed to their great
industry, the labor of all members of the family except the small-
est children, to their very great thrift, to the liberal advances of
capital made by the sugar companies, and the credit extended
to them freely by the banks.
Not even the Japanese have made as rapid advance as the
German-Russians. A comparatively small number of German-
Russians are engaged in tenant farming in one locality in Idaho
also. They, too, were brought to the community (from Port-
land) by the manufacturers of beet sugar, and settled upon the
land. In their housing and the number engaged in the different
industries in which they have found employment in the past,
they have materially decreased within the last decade or so. It is
unlikely that the migration from the Coast States, mainly from
California to the East, and the more general distribution of Chi-
nese throughout the country, explain entirely the decreasing
number of persons of that race, including the native-born, found
in the West.
The immigration of Chinese laborers to this country may be
said to date from the rush to California in search of gold sixty
years ago. Within ten years a relatively large number of persons
of that race, more than 45,000 in fact, found a place in the popu-
lation of that State. Before the close of the decade of the sixties,
they had engaged in a variety of occupations, as the absence of
cheap labor from any other source, their industry and organiza-
tion, and the rapid growth of the country placed a premium
upon their employment. The largest number (some 20,000 in
1861) engaged in gold mining; several thousand, many of them
imported under contract, were employed toward the end of the
CHINESE IMMIGRATION 193
decade in the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad,
which was to form the first of the transcontinental railways
making possible an influx of laborers from the East. Other
Chinese engaged in gardening, laundering, domestic service,
and hand labor in the fields, while still others found employment
in factories and workshops or engaged in business for themselves.
As domestic servants in San Francisco, in 1870, they numbered
1256 out of a total of 6800, their number being exceeded by
that of the Irish only, of whom 3046 were reported. Chinese
laundrymen numbered 1333 in a total of 2069 reported. As
laborers in domestic and personal service they numbered 2128
in a total of 8457. According to the census for 1870, they num-
bered 296 of 1551 persons employed in San Francisco in the
manufacture of boots and shoes, 1657 °f the 1811 employed in
the manufacture of cigars, 253 of 393 employed in the manufac-
ture of woolens, and no of 1223 employed in the manufacture
of clothing, a total of 2316 of a grand total of 4978 employed
in these four industries. These were the chief branches of manu-
facture in cities in which they found employment. With the
development of salmon canning in Oregon and Washington dur-
ing the eighties and still later with the development of the same
industry in Alaska, they were for many years employed almost
exclusively in canning, under contract, the fish caught by white
fishermen. They also constituted a large percentage, when not
a majority, of the "powder makers" and general laborers em-
ployed in powder factories.
For twenty years, beginning in the late sixties, several thousand
found employment as construction laborers upon the new rail-
ways constructed from time to time and as section hands upon
those already constructed. They also found employment as
general laborers, engine wipers and boiler washers, and in other
occupations calling for little skill in railroad shops. Or still
previous to 1870, as hand laborers in the orchards, fields, hop-
yards, and vineyards of California north of the Tehachapi, and
in the canneries and other establishments incidental to conserving
and marketing the crops produced. In 1870 they numbered
1637 in a total of 16,231 farm laborers reported by the census
for California. Though the estimate made by the California
bureau of labor in 1886, that Chinese constituted seven eighths
1 94 CHARACTERISTICS
of the agricultural laborers of the State, was doubtless a great
exaggeration, they did most of the hand work, such as hoeing,
weeding, pruning, and harvesting, in all localities in the central
and northern part of the State in which intensive farming was
carried on. Their presence and organization at a time when
cheap and reliable white laborers were difficult to obtain made
possible the high degree of specialized farming which came to
prevail in several localities. They occupied a much less conspicu-
ous place in the harvest work involved in general farming. Being
inefficient with teams, and white men being available for such
work in most localities, they were practically limited to hand
work. In other States than California they found little place
in agricultural work, the largest number being employed in the
hop industry of the Northwest. In fact, until the eighties few
of the Chinese resided outside of California. This race never
gained a place in coal mining except in Wyoming, where they
were employed in the mines developed after the completion of
the Union Pacific Railway.
The ease with which the Chinese found employment and the
place they came to occupy in the. West is explained by several
facts. First of all, they were the cheapest laborers available
for unskilled work. The white population previous to the eighties
was drawn almost entirely from the eastern States and from
north European countries, and, as in all rapidly developing com-
munities, the number of women and children was comparatively
small. According to the census of 1870, of 238,648 persons en-
gaged in gainful occupations in California, 46 per cent were
native-born, 13 per cent were born in Ireland, 8 per cent in Ger-
many, 4.8 per cent in England and Wales, 2 per cent in France,
and 1.4 per cent in Italy. The Chinese, with 14 per cent of the
total, were more numerous than the Irish. The Chinese worked
for lower wages than the white men in the fields and orchards,
in the shoe factories, the cigar factories, the woolen mills, and
later in most of the other industries in which the two classes
were represented. As a result of this, a division of labor grew
up in which the Chinese were very generally employed in certain
occupations, while white persons were employed in other occu-
pations requiring skill, a knowledge of English, and other quali-
ties not possessed by the Asiatics, and sufficiently agreeable
CHINESE IMMIGRATION 195
in character and surroundings to attract white persons of the
type at that time found in the population of the West. Upon
occasion, too, the lower cost of production with Chinese labor
caused more of the work to fall into their hands as they became
well enough trained to do it. Instances of this are found in the
manufacture of cigars and shoes in San Francisco.
Chinese labor was well organized and readily available; for
the cigar makers, shoemakers, and tailors, as well as the launder-
ers, were organized into trade guilds with an interpreter and
agent or " bookman" in each white establishment in which they
were employed. Agricultural laborers were secured through a
"boss" and employed under his supervision. The same organi-
zation was found in fish canneries, where the work was done
under contract at so much per case, also in the fruit and vegetable
canneries — in fact in all industries in which more than a few
men were employed. The hiring and supervision of men in this
way was convenient and of great advantage to the employer
in such industries as were seasonal in character. In agriculture,
where several times as many men were wanted for a limited
period as during the remainder of the year, this organization of
labor placed a great premium upon the Chinese as employees.
In the manufacture of cigars, some manufacturers state that
Chinese were found to be much slower than women and youths,
while in the manufacture of boots and shoes they never attained
to highly skilled work. In other industries, however, they were
very generally regarded as efficient workers for all kinds of hand
work. This is especially true of fish, fruit, and vegetable canning
and of all kinds of hand work in orchards and vegetable gardens.
Though unprogressive and slow, they accomplished much work
through industry and long hours, and by the exercise of care the
quality of the work performed was of a high order.
Finally, to mention only the more important of the facts
giving rise to an effective preference for Chinese for such work
as they were employed to do, in canneries, on the ranches, and
in other places where the employees ordinarily could not live
at home, they found favor because they involved the least trouble
and expense. They provided their own subsistence where white
men, if they did not live close at hand, would ordinarily be pro-
vided with board. Lodgings were easily provided for the Chinese,
I96 CHARACTERISTICS
for whatever may be said concerning their standard of living
as a whole, they are gregarious and are less dissatisfied when
" bunked" in small quarters than is any other race thus far
employed in the West.
After much ineffective state and local legislation in California
the further immigration of Chinese of the laboring class was
forbidden by the first of the federal exclusion laws, enacted in
1882. There had been opposition to the Chinese in the mining
camps of California as early as 1852, this finally leading to the
miners' license tax collected from them alone, in the cigar trade
in San Francisco as early as 1862, and in other trades in which
the Chinese were engaged beginning somewhat later. For the
opposition many reasons were assigned, but the most important
appears to have been race antipathy based upon color, language,
and race traits, which has frequently found expression where
numerous Chinese and white men of the laboring classes have
been brought into close contact. This feeling found expression
not only in San Francisco on numerous occasions, but in many
other towns in California, in Tacoma, where Chinese have not
been permitted to reside, and in the riots at Rock Springs,
Wyoming, in 1882. In public discussion many reasons were
advanced rightly or wrongly for excluding the Chinese, but that
the opposition was more than a part of a labor movement is
evidenced by the fact that many ranchers who were employing
Chinese at the time voted " against Chinese immigration" at
the election held in California in 1879, at which time the matter
of Chinese exclusion was submitted to popular vote.
It has been estimated that the number of Chinese in the
United States at the time the first exclusion act went into effect
(1882) was 132,300. The number of Chinese laborers did not
diminish perceptibly for several years after this. More recently,
because of the wider distribution of the Chinese among the States,
the decreasing number in the country, the large percentage who
have grown old, a strong sentiment against employing Asiatics
in manufacture, and the appearance of the Japanese, a change
has laken place in the occupations in which the Chinese engage.
During the nineties, with the growth of the fishing industry
.on the Pacific coast, the number of Chinese engaged in cannery
work has grown ; but owing to the increasing difficulty involved
CHINESE IMMIGRATION 197
in securing them and the higher wages which they have come to
command since 1900, an increasing number of Japanese and,
very recently, Filipinos, have been employed.
During the year 1909 some 3000 Chinese were employed in
canneries in Oregon, Washington, and Alaska, most of them
migrating from San Francisco and Portland. The number of
Japanese employed was approximately the same. Both races
are employed in the great majority of the establishments, a
Chinese ordinarily having the contract for the work done, em-
ploying his countrymen for the more skilled work, and Japanese,
under a Japanese "boss," and other persons for the less skilled
occupations. The Chinese command much higher wages than
the Japanese. In fruit and vegetable canning in California per-
haps 1000 or more Chinese are employed. Of 750 men employed
in six asparagus canneries on the Sacramento River, nearly
all are Chinese secured through one Chinese "boss." Most of
the others are employed in two canneries operated by Chinese
companies. In other canneries European immigrants of the
newer type, chiefly Italians, Greeks, and Portuguese, have been
substituted for them. In some instances where Chinese were
formerly employed but were discharged by their employers
because of the feeling against the race or because of public criti-
cism, Asiatics are not now employed.
Few Chinese are now employed in railway work. As section
hands they had all but disappeared ten years or more ago, and
the number still employed in railway shops is small. As they grew
old and their numbers diminished so that they could not furnish
a large percentage of the laborers required, their departure was
hastened by the well-organized Japanese, who took employment
at the same wages (and less than was paid to other races) , though
the Chinese are almost universally regarded as better "help"
than the Japanese except in such occupations about the shops
as require adaptability and progressiveness. The Chinese were
in part replaced by other races before Japanese became avail-
able, and where this was done it was generally at a higher wage,
except in the case of the Mexicans, than the Chinese had received.
The Chinese engaged in agriculture were very largely replaced
by Japanese. The Chinese engaged in the growing of sugar beets
were underbid and displaced by the more progressive and quicker
198 CHARACTERISTICS
Japanese and have all but absolutely disappeared from the
industry. In the hop industry the Japanese underbid the Chinese
as the Chinese had the white men. Because of this fact and the
further fact that the Japanese had the same convenient organiza-
tion and were more numerous, the Chinese have come to occupy
a comparatively unimportant place in that industry. The same
is true in the deciduous-fruit industry, though Chinese lease
orchards and in almost every locality are employed in compara-
tively large groups on some of the older ranches. The largest
amount of land is leased by them and the largest number of them
are employed for wages in the orchards and on the large tracts
devoted to the production of vegetables on the Sacramento and
San Joaquin rivers. In a few localities they migrate from place
to place for seasonal work, but such instances have become
exceptional. Nearly all work in the same place throughout the
year. Moreover, as the Japanese have advanced the Chinese
have leased fewer orchards and withdrawn to grow vegetables
or have gone to the towns and cities. Though the number em-
ployed in agricultural work is by no means small, they are no
longer a dominant factor in the labor supply, and especially
in that required for harvesting the crops. The place once occupied
by them has for several years been occupied by the Japanese.
The number of Chinese engaged in mining has for many years
been small, some 40 in coal mining in Wyoming as against several
hundred formerly employed there, and several hundred as against
many thousand in gold mining in California.
Many Chinese are living in the small towns of the West, en-
gaged in laundry work, petty business, and gambling, or rather
conducting places for gambling. The laundries are patronized
chiefly by white people, the shops by Chinese, and the gambling
places by Chinese and Japanese. In San Francisco they are
much less conspicuously employed in domestic service and manu-
facture than formerly. Most of those engaged in domestic serv-
ice are high-priced cooks in private families and in saloons.
They now have a scarcity value. The most recently published
estimate made by the assessor for the city and county of San
Francisco of the number of Chinese engaged in manufacture
(in San Francisco) was, for 1903, 2420, the branches of manu-
facture having more than 100 being cigar making, with 800
CHINESE IMMIGRATION 199
Chinese in a total of 1300 ; clothing, with 250 in a total of 1050 ;
shirt making, with 300 in a total of 1500, and shoemaking, with
250 in a total of 950. Their numbers in all of these, cases are
smaller than formerly. In shoe and cigar making many were
discharged during the seventies and eighties because of public
criticism or fear of boycott. When white persons were substi-
tuted it was, in some cases at least, at a higher wage and for a
shorter work day. At present the Chinese employed are among
the low paid laborers in " white shops." The same is true of
those employed in powder factories, where the number is much
smaller than formerly.
The assessment roll for 1908 shows 20 cigar factories, 3 broom
factories, i shoe factory, and 5 overall factories conducted by
Chinese in San Francisco. By far the largest number of Chinese,
however, some 1000, are ejnployed in the 100 Chinese laundries.
The other branches of business are of comparatively little impor-
tance save the art and curio stores which are conducted by busi-
ness men from China. Of the Chinese in other cities much the
same may be said, except that they occupy no important place
in manufacture and that they frequently conduct cheap restau-
rants, patronized largely by workingmen. In Portland they also
conduct numerous tailor shops. On the whole, the Chinese have
not shown the same progressiveness and competitive ability
either in industry or in business for themselves as the Japanese.
They have, however, occupied a more important place in manu-
facture, especially in San Francisco, where, until within the last
twenty years, little cheap labor has been available from other
sources.
y
CHINESE IMMIGRATION1
KEE OWYANG, EXPOSITION COMMISSIONER, FORMER CONSUL AT SAN
FRANCISCO
LET me have the pleasure of raising the question at the outset
as to what is the Chinese Exclusion Law. What is the es-
sence of the spirit of it all? Is it born of justice or otherwise?
I think if you will take the pains and trouble of finding it out for
your own satisfaction and information, you will readily observe
that the Exclusion Law is the outcome of a long series of unwise
legislation hi one of the chapters of American history.
To be sure, the trouble dated back to the time when the
Chinese and their Occidental brothers first came in contact
with one another in the days of '49 — in the days of mad rush
after gold in California, and railroad construction on the western
coast.
Doubtless there were differences, strife, and contention among
them in the placer mines, which would inevitably arise when
people of divers tongues, manners, and customs come together
for the first time. It was even difficult for the working people
of the various European nations to get along well together in the
earlier days of California, but we can easily imagine the greater
differences existing between the Chinese and the white people
whose religion and education have made them think and act
entirely different from one another. In consequence, misun-
derstanding and discord were bound to arise. The early politi-
cal leaders and other agitators, instead of attempting to alleviate
conditions, instilled in the people at large hatred and prejudice
which I think you will agree with me were unwarranted and
unreasonable.
However, we must not forget that most of these Chinese
laborers came here at that time, at the invitation of the United
1 Printed by The American Sociological Society and the Committee of One
Hundred, Federal Council of Churches in America, August, 1915.
200
CHINESE IMMIGRATION 201
States. The right of so coming of the Chinese people was guar-
anteed under solemn treaty between China and the United
States, which treaty existed until 1880. The Chinese were then
no longer desirable, and because of all these agitations and
clamor of all the mischief-makers, the government of this coun-
try had committed itself to an act which justice cannot defend.
You know the United States solemnly agreed in said treaty that
the coming of Chinese laborers may be suspended but never
absolutely prohibited. But since that time the United States
prohibited Chinese immigration and thus the government broke
faith with China by passing a law in direct violation of said
treaty, and the courts have aided in said violation by deciding
that Congress had the right to pass such an act.
The American Christian missionary in China from that time
on found their good work seriously hindered. Thus you see
that from time immemorial political leaders, demagogues, and
agitators resorted to misrepresentation, falsehood, and vehemence
to secure their political jobs and favors, and they did not dare
say anything favorable to the Chinese. I need not labor much
longer upon this point. Suffice it to indicate that all this agitation
directed against the Chinese by political demagogues was respon-
sible for the Exclusion Act. The act excluding the Chinese immi-
gration was not tempered with justice or a square deal. The
Exclusion Law to-day is nothing but the culmination of all the
early agitators. The reason for excluding Chinese people is
racial, not economic. As a noted lawyer of this c*oast once said :
"We are afflicted with the malady of race hatred; and infected
with this disease. Everything that the Oriental does is, to our
sick vision, distorted into an offense which causes us to vomit
forth at home our rancor and spleen."
All we ask of the American Government is to give the Chinese
fair treatment and not favor in the matter of exclusion, and give
us the same treatment as is accorded to people of other nationali-
ties. I wish I had time to enter into details regarding the differ-
ences in which the people of other nations are treated. The
Exclusion Law does not only exclude all Chinese laborers, or
coolies as you call them, but it inflicts tremendous hardships
upon the Chinese of the exempt classes ; that is, merchants,
travelers, students, and teachers, and even officials at times.
202 CHARACTERISTICS
It seems that it is much easier for them to enter Heaven than
to set foot on the American continent, even when they enter this
port with the Consul's Certificate or other documents issued
and signed by American diplomatic agents in China.
The spirit of the Exclusion Law is to exclude the coolie class,
but it was certainly not intended to hinder those who are above
the coolie class when they are properly vouched for by the Ameri-
can Consular or Immigration Agent in China. On presentation
of the proper certificate they ought to be permitted to land with-
out much ado. When the officials place all these obstacles in
our way, can it be said that they are acting in a spirit of justice ?
The Exclusion Law as it stands is a discrimination against a
single nation, a legislation against a race of people, branding
them as being totally unworthy of the privilege of travel, resi-
dence, or citizenship in the United States. I frankly admit that
there must be restriction for immigrants coming into this country,
but the restriction ought to be applied to Oriental and Occi-
dental people alike. There should be no unfair discrimination
against a single nation, especially when that nation believes in
peace and righteousness so firmly that it scorns to think that it
has to be maintained or enforced by might.
I sincerely hope to see the Exclusion Law altered to read,
.Restriction Law. If you do that you will have done much in
removing the only element of friction between the two most
friendly republics on each side of the Pacific. Aside from her
objection to the Exclusion Law, China has every reason to be
thankful to the United States. Political leaders and wild agita-
tors in this country have inflicted much harm upon the Chinese
people in the name of the Exclusion Law, while, on the other
hand, many statesmen have bestowed much good and many
blessings upon China.
China cannot help but hold the United States in grateful
memory. I say exactly what I mean, and mean what I say.
The United States is the only powerful nation that has not at
any time resorted to methods of bullying, coercing, or browbeat-
ing China for the sake of commercial gain. ,In short, she is ever
ready to stretch forth a helping hand in any crisis that China
might have to pass through. Who helped to preserve the integ-
rity of China by means of the open door policy, but the United
CHINESE IMMIGRATION 203
States? Who took the lead in returning a portion of the Boxer
indemnity fund which the powers extorted out of China, but the
United States? Which was the first power to recognize the
establishment of the Republic of China, but the United States?
Who is doing the best medical and educational work in China,
but the United States? Counting up the blessings one by one
we have much indeed to be thankful for to the United States.
So you can readily see that the Exclusion Law is the only
obstacle in the way of the most friendly relations between the
two nations. Removing that, you will have a great admirer in
the younger republic of the world.
America has always set a noble example to the world and a
striking illustration is her position of neutrality in the present
great war. As one great American said: " She ought to decree
such wise things and such right things that she shall be considered
a leader to the free nations of the earth."
The best means, therefore, of modifying the Exclusion Law is
for the Christian people as well as all fair-minded Americans,
to band together and educate and awaken the public opinion to
the realization of the fact that there is but very little spirit of
justice in the Exclusion Law. You will then have accomplished
much in getting rid of the little element of friction between the
two countries, and you will have exemplified to the wide world
that America is a land full of noble impulse for justice and
humanity.
IV. THE NEW IMMIGRATION
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS WITH THE NEW IMMIGRANT
EDWARD C. STEINER, PROFESSOR OF APPLIED CHRISTIANITY,
GRINNELL COLLEGE
IT IS now twenty-five years since I landed in the United States
with a group of Slovaks from the district of Scharosh in
Hungary.
I followed them across the sea and watched this historic move-
ment of the Slavs, who until then had remained practically
dormant where they had been left by the glacier-like move-
ment of their race, the pressure of the invader, or the fate which
governed Eastern European politics.
It was a fascinating experience to see these forgotten children
of an unresponsive soil coming in touch with a civilization of
which they had never dreamed ; to see the struggle of emotions
in their usually impassive faces, as they saw the evidences of
European culture and wealth in the Northern cities through
which we passed.
What fear crept into their hearts and drove the healthy blood
from their cheeks when for the first time they saw the turbu-
lent sea.
The ocean was vaster and the fear of it most real to us who
sailed out of Bremerhaven in the steerage of the steamer Fulda;
for we were the forerunners of a vast army of men which had
scarcely begun to think of leaving its age-long bivouac. The
Slav has never taken kindly to the sea, and the more held
unconquered terrors.
It is difficult now to describe the incidents of that first landing
in New York, for in rapid succession the experience has been so
often repeated ; and all the joys, fears, and hopes which repeatedly
I have shared with hundreds and thousands of men are so blended
in my memory into one great wonder, that either analysis or
description seems vain.
204
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS WITH NEW IMMIGRANT 205
It is strange and yet natural, no doubt, that I remember
the trivial incidents of that first landing. The attempt on the
part of some of my Slovaks to eat bananas without removing
the skins; their first acquaintance with mince pie, which they
declared a barbarous dish; our first meal on American soil,
in a third-rate boarding-house for immigrants, and the injunc-
tion of one of the earlier comers: " Don't wait for anybody,
but grab all you can. In this country the motto is : 'Happy is
the man who can help himself ! ' '
I remember the lonely feeling that crept over us as we found
ourselves like driftwood in the great current of humanity in the
city of New York, and the fear we had of every one who was
at all friendly; for we had been warned against sharpers. I
remember our pleasure in the picturesque ferryboat which
carried us to New Jersey, its walking beam seeming like the
limbs of some great monster crossing the water.
Then crowding fast upon one another come memories of hard
tasks in gruesome mines and ghostly breakers ; the sight of lick-
ing flames like fiery tongues darting out at us, from furnaces full
of bubbling, boiling metal ; the circling camps of the coke burn-
ers who kept their night's vigil by the altars of the Fire God.
There are memories of dark ravines and mud banks, choked
by refuse of mill and mine ; the miners' huts, close together, as
if space were as scarce on the earth as compassion for the stranger.
I remember the kindness of the poor, the hospitality of the
crowded, the hostility of the richer and stronger, who feared
that we would drive them from their diggings ; and the unbelief
of those to whom I early began preaching the humanity of the
Slav — rough and uncouth, but human still, although he has
scarcely ever had a fair chance to prove it.
Of the names of the various towns through which I passed,
in which I worked and watched, I particularly remember
four : Connellsville, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and
Streator, Illinois, all of them typical coal towns. In none of
them were my people received with open arms, although they
rarely met with organized hostility.
In Scranton and in Streator, they still remember our coming
and our staying. Since then, I have repeatedly visited all these
four places upon errands of investigation and interpretation.
206 THE NEW IMMIGRATION
I always dreaded going back to them; not only because it
would revive painful memories of a very hard apprenticeship,
but because I could not avoid asking myself if the optimism
with which I have treated the problem of immigration, by voice
and pen, would be justified.
What if the Americans in these cities should say :
We have lived with these Slavs for twenty-five years and more;
we have been with them day after day, while you have flitted about
the country. We know better than you do. We told you the "Hun-
key" was a menace when he came, and he is a menace still.
f^f well know that my readers and my auditors have often criti-
cized my optimism, and especially the sympathetic note with
which I approach this problem, regarding which they are always
more skeptical the more remote they are from it.
I have tried to modify my view of the problem by facing it
in all its bearings; I have not shrunk from seeing the worst of
it. In fact I know American cities best from that dark and
clouded side. I know the Little Italics, the Ghettos, the Patches
around the mines, the East Side of New York and the West
Side of Chicago ; although I have never been the full length of
Fifth Avenue and have never seen the famous North Shore
drive.
I am familiar with penitentiaries, jails, police courts, and even
worse places ; for I wanted to know to what depths these leaden
souls can sink, and I fear that I have more anxiety as to their
nativity than their destiny. Yet, having seen the worst of the
bad, I never lost my faith in these lesser folk and my optimism
remained unclouded. One fear alone assailed me; that what
my critics said to me and of me was true. "He is an immigrant
himself, and of course it is natural that he should see the brighter
side of the problem." To me, that was the severest and most
cutting criticism, just because I feared it might be true ; yet I
have honestly tried to see the darkest side of this question, both
as it affected the immigrant and the country that received him.
I have listened patiently to jeremiads of home mission secre-
taries about these "Godless foreigners." I have read the reports
of Immigrant Commissions, and all the literature written the
last few years upon this subject, and I am still optimistic, and
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS WITH NEW IMMIGRANT 207
disagree with much that I have heard and read. Many authors
who have written regarding this question had no first-hand in-
formation about it. They knew neither the speech nor the
genius of these new people ; they had a fixed belief that all civiliza-
tion, culture, and virtue, belong to the north of Europe and that
the east and southeast of that continent are its limbo ; and they
relied upon statistics, which at best are misleading, when used
to estimate human conduct and human influences.
Typical of this class of literature is a recent pamphlet upon
the subject, which, judging from the excellent bibliography ap-
pended, must be based upon extensive reading ; yet the author
comes to this conclusion :
Assimilation in the twentieth century is a very different matter
from assimilation in the nineteenth. In many respects, the new immi-
gration is as bad as the old was good.1
There are several facts which this author has forgotten, as
have those from whom he draws. First, the older immigrant
is not yet assimilated. In the agricultural counties of Mr.
Edwards' own state, there are townships in which the English
language is a foreign tongue, although the second generation
of Germans already plows the fertile fields of Wisconsin; and
there are cities where the Germans have thoroughly assimilated
the Americans.
There are places of no mean size in Pennsylvania, which are as
German as they were 200 years ago, and as far as the Irish every-
where are concerned, it is still a question what we shall be when
they have done with us.
I venture to predict that the twentieth century immigrant
will assimilate much more quickly and completely than the
immigrants of the eighteenth and the early half of the nineteenth
centuries assimilated.
Beside the fact that the process is going on much more rapidly
than ever before, as I asserted, my theories are corroborated
by Professor Ross, of the University of Wisconsin, whose book
is suggestive if not conclusive. Speaking of the assimilation of
the immigrant, he says :
1 " Studies on American Social Conditions — Immigration." By Richard
Henry Edwards, p. 9.
208
THE NEW IMMIGRATION
On the whole, those who come now Americanize much more readily
than did the non- English immigrants of the seventeenth and eight-
eenth centuries. Not only do they come from lesser peoples and from
humbler social strata, but, thanks to the great role the United States
plays in the world, the American culture meets with far more prestige
than it had then. Although we have ever greater masses to assimilate,
let us comfort ourselves with the fact that the vortical suction of
our civilization is stronger now than even before.1
Neither is any one prepared to prove that the "new immigrant
is as bad as the old was good."
It is very interesting that when authors and speakers quote
statistics, as they usually do, to prove the criminal nature of
the new immigrant, they do not differentiate between the older
and the newer groups. If they did, and would let statistics
determine the issue, they would find that the new immigrant is
good and the old bad ; yes, very bad.
The following tables, quoted from the Report of the Commis-
sion of Immigration of the State of New York, are worthy the
close study of Mr. Edwards and the authors upon whom he has
relied.2
STATISTICS REFERRING TO FOREIGN-BORN OFFENDERS COM-
MITTED TO NEW YORK STATE PRISONS AND PENITENTIARIES
DURING 1904
TOTAL NUMBER OF PRISONERS COMMITTED
MAJOR
OFFENSES
MINOR
OFFENSES
TOTAL
Aggregate .
"2 6?0
26,136
20,81^
Total white
T..T.4.Z
24,060
28,^14
Native white
2 266
16 7^0
10 O2<C
Native white of native parentage
Native white of foreign parentage
Native white of mixed parentage
1,223
732
263
10,266
4,500
I ^O^
11,489
5,232
1,768
Native white of unknown parentage
Foreign-born whites
48
I O7Z
488
8 1 58
536
0*233
Whites of unknown nativity
4
^2
56
Negroes
•2 -2Q
I T2Q
1,460
Mongolians
I
i
Indians ....
27
•zi
185.
Social Psychology," Ross, p. 140.
2 Report of Commission of Immigration of the State of New York, pp. 182 and
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS WITH NEW IMMIGRANT 209
FOREIGN-BORN WHITE OFFENDERS BY NATIVITY
MAJOR
OFFENSES
PER
CENT:
MINOR
OFFENSES
PER
CENT
48
A.<
2^0
3-2
Canada
68
6 3
43^
e.^z
Denmark
r
o ^
28
o.^
England and \Vales
67
6 2
6s*
8 i
France . .....
IO
i 8
no
1.4
Germany
• 212
10-7
1,136
l^. o
Hungary
T r
I 4.
8*
I O
Ireland
IAS
I? 7
•2 r6o
4-2.0
Italy
2CC
2^.7
601
7.7
JVJexico
6
O.I
Norway
7
O 7
46
O.1?
Poland
?o
2.8
232
2.8
Russia
I IO
no
•2Q2
4.0
Scotland ....
17
i 6
2 2O
2.7
Sweden
14
i. T.
163
2.O
Switzerland
4
0.4
A7
O-5
Other countries
47
4.4
171
2.1
Totals
1,07^
IOO.O
8,158
IOO.O
PAUPERS ADMITTED TO ALMSHOUSES IN NEW YORK STATE
DURING YEAR 1904, BY NATIVITY AND LENGTH OF RESIDENCE
IN THE UNITED STATES
All paupers admitted 10,272
Per cent of white paupers admitted : x
Native - . . 44.0 per cent.
Foreign-born 56.0 per cent.
FOREIGN-BORN WHITE PAUPERS ADMITTED IN 1904, BY NATIVITY
COUNTRY OF BIRTH
PER CENT
PER CENT
Ireland
S4-.3
Germany
18.7
England and Wales ...
6.4
Canada (including Newfoundland) ....
4-3
Scandinavia .
2.0
France ....
0.9
Scotland .... .
2.O
Italy . .
3-5
88.6
Hungary and Bohemia ....
0.6
3.3
Unknown
. 4.0
11.4
Grand total • •
IOO.O
2IO
THE NEW IMMIGRATION
What is more striking still is the following table which seems
to prove that the new immigrant does not increase his percentage
in the criminal column materially, in fact that there is a slight
tendency to decrease it.1
FOREIGN-BORN OFFENDERS ACCORDING TO YEARS OF RESIDENCE IN THE
UNITED STATES
YEARS
MAJOR
OFFENSES
PER
CENT
MINOR
OFFENSES
PER
CENT
Under one year
l6
32
86
I O
One year
7O
72
220
2 8
Two years .
6*
* 8
2O7
* 6
Three years
C2
4.8
a8<
7 A
Four years
AQ
3 6
1 77
2 2
Over four years
824.
71? 3
7 14.3
87 o
Totals . . f
I OQ4.
IOO O
8 217
IOO O
I am not trying to prove that the old immigration was worse
than the new ; I do not believe that these statistics prove it, in
spite of their appearing to. But they do prove conclusively
that statistics of this kind are absolutely unreliable in furnishing
tests of the moral fiber of this or that group.
Far more reliable is the verdict of various communities after
twenty-five years' experience with the new immigrant.
Take for example the city of Streator, 111., which has steadily
grown in size and in the number and variety of its industrial
establishments; a development which could not have taken
place without the new* immigrant. There are certain unprofitable
seams in the mines which the English-speaking miners would not
have worked ; even as there are less profitable veins which the
Slav does not care to touch and which are being worked by Sicil-
ians, new upon the scene.
It is true that out of the 500 Welsh miners there are only
about fifty left ; but the 450 were pushed up and not out, and
Lare in no position to complain. They have moved on to farms
and have grown prosperous, while some of the most lucrative
business in the city is theirs.
It does seem a great pity that a skilled trade like mining should
x have passed into the hands of unskilled laborers ; but for this,
1 Report of Commission of Immigration of the State of New York, p. 183.
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS WITH NEW IMMIGRANT 211
the invention of machinery is to blame, and not the foreigner.
Had comparatively cheap labor been unavailable, the genius
of the American would not have stopped until he had all but
eliminated the human element, as he has done in many other
trades in which unskilled foreign labor is not a factor.
Twenty-five years ago I "squatted" near mine No. 3 with
my men from Scharosh. It was as wretched a patch as miners'
patches always are. We bunked twenty in a room and took as
good care of our bodies as conditions permitted ; so that when
we went down- town we were cleanly if not stylish.
My men soon learned to drink whisky like the Irish, swear
like the English, and dress like the Americans.
After twenty-five years the patches around the mines in Streator
are practically gone, and the homes there are as good as the Welsh
or English miners ever had. Some of the newer additions in that
growing city are occupied entirely by Slavs and do them credit.
Nor has the Slav been content to remain in' the mines; he,
too, has begun to move out and up. He owns saloons and sightly
stores in which his sons and daughters clerk, and it would take
a very keen student of race characteristics to distinguish the
Slavs from the native Americans.
"Do you see that young man at the entrance to the Chautauqua?"
said Mr. Williams, its public spirited secretary.
"Racially, his father is as sharply marked a man as I have ever
seen, and the son, a graduate of Harvard, looks as if his forefathers
had all grown up in the salt air of the New England coast."
Here in Streator were the people who have lived with the new
immigrant a quarter of a century and more, and I have spoken
to them three times, in my most optimistic vein ; many a man
and woman have said :
You are right, they make splendid citizens.
They are good neighbors.
They are as human as we are, and they are proving it.
This, in spite of the fact that in Streator as in Connellsville
and in hundreds of industrial towns, they have been met with
suspicion and have been treated with injustice !
212 THE NEW IMMIGRATION
"They are a great strain upon our political institutions," said
Mr. Williams, himself once a Welsh miner, pushed out of the
mine by the Slav and now one of the leading citizens of Streator.
But Mr. Williams knows that the year I lived in Streator, when
the Slav had no vote or influence, politics in that city were already
corrupt and that the corrupters were native Americans, whose
ancestors harked back to the Mayflower, and who were rewarded
for their corruption by high political offices. In truth, when the
Slav came to this country, there was nothing left to corrupt,
in Scranton or Wilkes-Barre, in Connellsville or Streator; or,
indeed, in all Pennsylvania and Illinois. The Slav now has some
political power ; but as yet he has not produced the "grafter." I
do not say that he will not ; but when he does, small blame to him.
In one of the four cities which I have mentioned, I shared with
a group of Poles the vicissitudes of the first few weeks in a
boarding-house, a combination of saloon and hotel, common in
Pennsylvania, and usually offering more bar than board.
One evening an American came among us, a splendid type
of agile manhood. When my men saw him, they said, "This is
a prince!" They did not know that he was a politician. He
shook hands with every one of us, and I said to the men, "This
is democracy ! " Poor fool ! I did not know that it was the day
before election.
Then he marched the men to the bar, and said to the barkeeper :
"Fill 'em up." And as they drank the fiery stuff, no doubt
they thought they were in Heaven, and forgot that they were
in Pennsylvania. When the whisky took effect, they were
marched into a large hall, where other Poles, drunk as they,
were congregated ; speeches were made, full of the twaddle of
political jargon which they did not understand, and when morn-
ing came, these Poles, so intoxicated that they did not know
whether they were North Poles or South Poles, were marched
to the voting-place and sworn in.
I have told this story in each of the four places referred to,
and in the place where it occurred, a judge, who was among my
audience, said to me :
"Don't tell that story again."
" Why not ? It is true," I replied.
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS WITH NEW IMMIGRANT 213
"Yes," he said, "it is perfectly true; but you'd better save your
strength. In this city, not only the foreigners, who are not citizens,
vote; but the dead vote, ,long after they have become citizens of
Kingdom Come."
One of these same Poles recently took me through the Capitol
of Pennsylvania at Harrisburg. With great pride he guided
me from foundation to dome, pointing out those objects of inter-
est which every stranger must see, as if they were the memorials
of noble deeds of valour.
They consist of wood, painted to imitate marble, chan-
deliers of base metal, to be sold by the pound, at fabulous
prices, and among many other spurious things, a safe, sup-
posed to be fireproof and burglar-proof, but which was not
politician-proof, for an ordinary gimlet bored a hole into its cor-
rupt heart.
What was distressing to me was not so much that the State
paid millions for this veneered and varnished fraud, but that
my Polish guide pronounced the word graft with evident relish
and without fear or shame.
I do not doubt that the presence of the new immigrant is "a
great strain upon our political institutions"; but not greater
than the old immigrant was, and still is. This certainly is true
of Pennsylvania ; for there are counties in that state, into whose
wilds the new immigrant has not yet penetrated, and where
those who have been living off its fat acres since their birth —
the sons of immigrants who came two hundred years ago —
hold their right of franchise cheap. I am told that in these coun-
ties nearly every vote can be bought for five dollars.
This may be idle rumor ; but the fact remains and can be
proved by any one who chooses to investigate, that Scranton,
Wilkes-Barre, Connellsville and a hundred other cities and towns,
are better governed now than they were before Slav, Latin, and
Jew came to live in their Patches and Ghettos. This is true in
spite of our having tried to corrupt these new citizens from the
very hour when they received their political rights, and that,
when they had no rights, we treated them with neglect and
scorn.
The mayor of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, a man of the newer
and better type of administrators, whose territory is completely
214 THE NEW IMMIGRATION
environed by the coke regions and has an almost totally foreign
population — says :
They make reliable citizens. They can be trusted absolutely.
Their worst enemy is drink ; but when a foreigner comes before me
and is fined, if he has no money and I let him go home, he will come
the next day to pay his fine even if he lives ten miles from town. Yet
in spite of the fact that the "Hunkey" and the "Dago" have helped
build up Greensburg and have enriched its citizens, they are still
held in contempt by the majority of its people.
This same official told me that a few years ago when the
Italians celebrated their Independence Day, the High School
boys of that city threw decayed vegetables at them and their
national flag.
Without the slightest reserve I can say this : Wherever an
enlightened official, like this mayor, or teachers of the public
schools, ministers of the Gospel and business men, have come in
real contact with the new immigrant, their verdict was entirely
different from that of Mr. Edwards and many of the professional
writers upon the problem which the foreigner represents.
There are some places in the United States where I have found
the immigrant a menace, and one of them is in Pittston, Pennsyl-
vania. There the Italian is really bad ; there he is an Anarchist
and a murderer. But in Pittston I discovered the really bad
American, an Anarchist and a murderer; although he may be
the owner of some of the mines or a high official in the town. In
that city, every law which governs mining has been openly
violated, and there is at least one mine in the place which is
nothing but a deep hell-hole and is known as such by the men
compelled to work in it. It is a mine in which anything may be
had for a bribe and anything may be done without fear of punish-
ment. In one of the last communal elections, the candidate for
its highest office kept open house, with beer and " booze" in one
of the miners' shacks ; young boys, not out of their teens, were
allowed to drink to intoxication, and the candidate already
mentioned was not an Italian or a Slav or a Jew ; but an Ameri-
can, unto the tenth generation, and a member of a Protestant
church.
I do not rejoice in writing this or in telling it as I have had to
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS WITH NEW IMMIGRANT 215
tell it in the towns affected, and to the very men who have thus
offended.
It is painful to me, because, after all, I do not feel myself so
closely identified with the immigrant as with the American.
While my sympathies are with the immigrant, they are much
more with this, my country, and with that circle of the native
born, whose ideals, whose hopes, and whose aspirations have
become mine.
I am not greatly concerned with immigration, per se; that is
a subject for the economist, which I am not. It is for him, if
he is skilled enough, to know whether we can afford to keep our
gates open to the millions who come, or when and to whom to
close them.
Narrowly, or perhaps selfishly, I am concerned for those who
are here ; that they be treated justly, with due appreciation of
their worth, and that they may see that best in the American
which has bound me to him, to his land and to its history ; to
its best men living, and to those of its dead who left a great leg-
acy, too great to be squandered by a prodigal generation.
Knowing how great this legacy is, and yet may be for the
blessing of mankind, I am pleading for this new immigrant. If
we care at all for that struggling, striving mass of men, un-
blessed as yet by those gifts of Heaven which have blessed us,
let us prove to these people of all kindreds and races and nations,
that our God is the Lord, that His law is our law and that all
men are our brothers.
IMMIGRANTS IN CITIES1
E. A. GOLDENWEISER, EXPERT IN CHARGE OF ClTY INQUIRY,
UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION COMMISSION
SEVEN cities were included by the Federal Immigration
Commission in its study of conditions : New York, which
with its hundreds of thousands of tenement houses and with an
equal number of pages describing their evils is preeminently
the congested city ; Chicago, which in lifting itself out of a swamp
left behind many a basement where the poor seek shelter, and
many a yard which is dry only in the hottest season ; Philadel-
phia, with its network of narrow alleys with surface drainage, its
three-room houses with insufficient water supply and sanitary
equipment, in a word, with its " horizontal tenement houses";
Boston, where " Americans in process" succeed each other in the
restricted area of the North and the West Ends, and where the
one-family dwelling, converted for the use of several households,
emphasizes the rapid change of conditions; Cleveland, which
awoke to find itself one of the leading cities in America and has
not had time to think of the necessity of protecting itself from
the slum ; Buffalo, with its enormous colony of Poles who have
come from. farms in Europe and have to learn the solution of the
problem of existence in a city ; and Milwaukee, the most foreign
city of them all, where there is no limit of space, and where in
spite of that, economic pressure frequently results in crowding
of houses on a lot and of persons in a house.
It was felt that an inquiry covering representative districts
in these seven cities could safely be accepted as indicative
of what may be found elsewhere in the United States, in the
poorest environment and most congested quarters. This also
would afford a much broader basis for judgment than the study
of a single locality. For many reasons the problem of the
1 From The Survey, January i, 1911.
216
IMMIGRANTS IN CITIES 217
immigrant in large cities has for almost a generation attracted a
great deal of attention. The vast majority of immigrants land in
two or three seaports, and large numbers remain there, for a time
at least. The phenomenal growth of cities and the difficulties
accompanying their growth have been intensified by the influx
of millions of aliens, who for the most part are unacquainted with
urban conditions in their own countries, and are dazed by the
complexity of existence in the great American cities. And it
must be remembered that writers, like immigrants, congregate
in large cities, and their proximity to the foreign colonies has had
its natural result. The social reformer who wishes to remedy
preventable evils, as well as the journalist who is anxious to
present readable material, has consistently dwelt on the crowding
and filth, the poverty and destitution, of which there are such
extreme instances in the poorer quarters of every city. Public
opinion has been aroused, and legislation enacted which has
tended to minimize the evils of overcrowding in many of the
older cities, and to inform the younger cities of the dangers of
unregulated growth. But the result also has been to create in the
popular imagination an impression that the extreme instances
cited are the whole story, and that the congested quarters of large
cities, full of filth, squalor, and depraved humanity, are a menace
to the nation's health and morals. Moreover, the responsibility
for these conditions is almost universally placed by old residents
on the immigrant, and primarily on the recent immigrant, from
the South and East of Europe. The Italian, the Hebrew, and
the Slav, according to popular belief, are poisoning the pure air
of our otherwise well-regulated cities ; and if it were not for them
there would be no congestion, no filth, and no poverty in the
great industrial and commercial centers of America.
Once the cities were selected, the problem was to choose the
districts. The method of study agreed upon was to canvass a
certain number of blocks, representing the most important races
in each city and the worst representative conditions. After the
blocks had been selected every household living there was visited,
and schedules were secured from them. In this way the study was
not confined to individual cases showing extremes of poverty or
of prosperity, but included every family that resided within the
chosen quarter. In most cases the blocks studied were uniformly
2Ig THE NEW IMMIGRATION
populated by one race. It was no easy problem to find blocks
of that description. The population of the districts in many
instances changes so rapidly, that the race which predominates
in one of them to-day may constitute but a small minority to-
morrow. City officials and settlement workers were helpful in
locating foreign colonies, but in addition we interviewed physi-
cians, district nurses, grocers, letter-carriers, priests, and saloon-
keepers. It was especially difficult to find solid blocks of Irish
and of Germans, and it is only fair to add that the households of
these older races often represent the failures which were left
behind when their more successful countrymen moved to better
.neighborhoods. For the sake of comparison, it was felt that some
American households ought to be included ; but that was a still
harder proposition. What was meant by Americans were house-
holds whose heads were natives of native fathers . Few such house-
holds were found in crowded districts, and never did they form
the majority of the population of a block. They were studied
whenever found within the specified areas inhabited by working
people. In Boston, to secure one hundred family schedules from
such native stock, about 700 homes were visited. It is worthy of
note that the search for Americans in the poorer quarters of
American cities was an arduous task.
To secure the desired information from every family visited
was not always an easy undertaking. The recent immigrants,
who are more accustomed to a paternalistic government and
have not learned the hall-marks of American liberty, were the
easiest to interview. Some of the old residents, who have learned
to look upon themselves as the sovereign people and consider
the government as their agent, were unwilling to answer the
questions. I shall never forget my own experience with an Irish
woman, twice my size, but as it turned out with a bad memory
for faces, who not only refused to answer my timid questions,
but took the trouble to escort me downstairs and to threaten
violence should I come " nosing around" again. This was at
the very outset of the work. A month or two later, fortified by
accumulated experience, I returned to the same house and
obtained schedules from all the tenants, including my formidable
antagonist, who this time was quite accommodating and confided
that she knew the difference between a real government agent
IMMIGRANTS IN CITIES 219
and a fraud. As proof, she told of the treatment she had recently
accorded to a "mutt" who wished to impose upon her. One of
the women agents had an exciting time in a "Krainer" household
in Cleveland. The owner of the house, a man of consequence in
the community, refused point blank to answer any questions,
grabbed the agent by the arm and put her out. The agent re-
ferred the matter to the United States marshal who accompanied
her on her next visit. The "Krainer" was impressed, helped
fill out the schedule, and ended by a proposal of marriage which
was taken as a great compliment by the canvasser. Another
schedule worker was one time surrounded by a crowd of irate
Italians, who would not let her leave the premises until she had
destroyed the records which she had taken great pains to obtain.
Incidents of this nature w.ere not unusual, but every agent who
worked in this investigation will agree with me, that the pro-
portion of "difficult" families was 'surprisingly small, when
the large number of questions asked and the personal character
of some of them are taken into consideration, and that the in-
vestigators owe a great deal to the willingness and courtesy of
most of the families canvassed.
The inquiry covered over 10,200 households and over 51,000
individuals. The largest number of households, 2667, was
studied in New York, and the smallest, 687, in Buffalo. It is
apparent that this total represents only a small proportion of all
families living amid congested conditions in the United States.
Yet those studied were representative of many times as many
households living under substantially similar conditions in the
seven cities chosen. It seems fair, therefore, to say that what the
study reveals are the worst living conditions existing on a large
scale in any of the large cities of America.
What then are some of the vital facts disclosed by the in-
vestigation? First of all, it reaffirms that crowded districts are
largely populated by immigrants, and more particularly by
recent immigrants. In the eastern cities, New York, Philadel-
phia, and Boston, the Russian Hebrews and the south Italians
are the largest elements in congested foreign colonies. In the
cities on the Great Lakes, Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, and Mil-
waukee, the various Slavic races, the Poles, Slovaks, and Slove-
nians, are found in large numbers. About two thirds of the
220 THE NEW IMMIGRATION
foreign-born in the selected districts have been in this country
less than ten years, and one< fifth has immigrated within the
past five years.
A noteworthy fact in this connection is that about one family
out of every ten visited owns its home. Of course, this does not
mean that the families have clear titles to the property ; but it
is indicative of thrift and of the intention on the part of the
immigrants to settle permanently in this country. The propor-
tion varies greatly from city to city; in Milwaukee, it is one in.
five ; in Buffalo, one in six ; in Chicago and in Cleveland, about
one in seven ; in Philadelphia, one in fourteen ; in Boston, one
in twenty, and in New York, one in two hundred.
In connection with the prevailing opinion about the filth,
which is supposed to be the natural element of the immigrant, it
is an interesting fact that, while perhaps five sixths of the blocks
studied justified this belief, so far as the appearance of the street
went, five sixths of the interiors of the homes were found to be
fairly clean, and two out of every five were immaculate. When
this is considered in connection with the frequently inadequate
water supply, the dark halls, and the large number of families
living in close proximity, the responsibility for uncleanliness and
insanitary conditions is largely shifted from the immigrants to
the landlords, and to the municipal authorities who spare no
expense in sprinkling oil to save the wealthy automobilists from
the dust, but are very economical when it comes to keeping the
poorer streets in a habitable condition. The water supply, the
drainage, and the condition of the pavement are also outside the
jurisdiction of the tenants ; and yet their neglect results in- bad
conditions for which the resident of the crowded districts is
blamed.
Congestion itself is a relative term, and hard to measure
statistically without going into more details than any extensive
investigation can afford to do. And yet it does seem like some-
thing of an anti-climax to the cry about terrible congestion,
when the fact is stated that the average number of persons per
room in the 10,000 households studied by the commission is
1.34. The average is higher in Boston, Philadelphia and Cleve-
land than in New York, and is lowest in Milwaukee, where the
figure is 1.15. Some races show averages far higher than those
IMMIGRANTS IN CITIES 221
for all the households studied, and yet the highest figure which
is found among the Slovenians does not exceed 1.72 persons per
room. These figures are significant, because they indicate that
the pictures of six or more persons per room, which are frequently
given to the public, do not represent general conditions, but are
exceptional. It is also interesting that New York shows lower
averages than Boston and Philadelphia. This suggests that after
all, when a certain density of population is reached, the building
of tenement houses tends to increase the amount of floor area
per acre and reduce the number of persons per square yard of
floor space, and presumably per room. Not that congestion per
acre is devoid of evils, such as traffic congestion, lack of breathing
space or of playgrounds for the children ; but this problem is part
of the general problem of the growth of large cities and is not
confined to foreign quarters.
Another current belief is that all of the foreigners in poorer
sections of cities keep large numbers of boarders or lodgers, and
sacrifice comfort and decency to their inordinate desire to save
money, in order presumably to return home and live on what they
have earned in America. I shall not stop to consider the economic
fallacy involved in this reasoning, and in the theory that these )
savings when sent abroad are a loss to America; I shall only 1
point out that the study of immigrant homes has shown that/
only about one out of every four keeps boarders or lodgers at/
all, so that three fourths of the households consist of what may
be called the natural family. It is further noteworthy that crowd-
ing in larger apartments is never as great as in smaller apartments,
which suggests that the immigrant household is crowded either
because, having a large family, the head cannot afford a sufficient
number of rooms ; or because, having taken an apartment of
standardized size, he finds himself unable to pay the rent and
support his family without the help of one or two lodgers. There
is no evidence of boarders or lodgers being kept as a business nor
of a sacrifice of comfort or decency to cupidity, as it is called in
the immigrant, or even to thrift, as it is called in the native. >
Crowding, when it appears, is the result of grim economic neces- /
sity, and as a rule it disappears as soon as the pressure relaxes. I
In studying foreign colonies in cities, one is constantly reminded
of the forces which create them and keep them together. Most
222 THE NEW IMMIGRATION
immigrants come to join friends or relatives and thus form the
nucleus of a colony ; the first few families attract more, and in a
short time a racial island is created in the city. Once the colony
is established there are many reasons for its continued existence
and growth.
It is expensive to move ; it is sometimes hard to find a position
in a new environment or to pay car fare, or even to be deprived
of the possibility of coming home for lunch. Furthermore,
friendly relations, kinship, language, religious affiliations, dietary
laws and preferences, and the greater ease of securing boarders in
districts where immigrants of the same race are centered, tend
to keep the families where they have once settled.
But when the immigrant becomes accustomed to American
conditions, when he has gained a firm economic footing, when his
children have gone to American schools, the desire for better
surroundings overcomes the economic and racial reasons for
remaining in congested districts. The stream of emigration from
the foreign colonies in large cities is continuous ; some move up-
town when they marry, some seek new places to establish their
own business ; others look for cleaner streets, and still others
follow the current for no conscious reason. The older immigrants
do not often form colonies in American cities any longer, and
the newer arrivals clearly tend to follow the example of their
predecessors in congested districts, gradually scattering over the
city of residence and often leaving that city altogether.
In conclusion, I wish to say that this study has not touched the
general problem of the distribution of immigrants and their
concentration in cities. What it has done is to show that the
immigrants in cities in a large majority of cases live a clean and
decent life, in spite of all the difficulties that are thrown in their
way by economic struggle and municipal neglect. The study
strongly indicates that racial characteristics are entirely sub-
ordinate to environment and opportunity in determining that
part of the immigrant's mode of life which is legitimately a matter
of public concern ; and finally, it shows that foreign colonies in
large cities are not stagnant, but are constantly changing their
composition, the more successful members leaving for better
surroundings, until finally the entire colony is absorbed in the
melting pot of the American city. The population of congested
IMMIGRANTS IN CITIES 223
quarters constantly changes, but the quarters themselves remain
congested and will remain so as long as new immigrants continue
to arrive in large numbers. It is vitally important for the city
to keep her crowded quarters clean and her tenement houses
sanitary ; but it is just as important that the public understand
that congested quarters of large cities are temporary receptacles
of newly arrived immigrants, rather than stagnant pools of filth,
and vice, and destitution.
THE IMMIGRANT WOMAN1
KATE WALLER BARRETT, M. D., SPECIAL AGENT, UNITED STATES
IMMIGRATION SERVICE
THE consideration of the subject of immigration is not new.
Ever since the days of the Athenian Republic, nations have
had the subject to deal with in some form.
The United States has passed through several stages in its
attitude on the subject. In early colonial days immigration was
so earnestly desired that enforced immigration was resorted to
and unwilling lawbreakers were deported from England to this
country and shiploads of slaves were brought from Africa. Let
us not forget that one of the most conspicuous problems that this
country has to face in regard to aliens dates from this latter
source.
One of the charges made against King George in the Declaration
of Independence was that he interfered with immigration, and yet
as early as 1780, Benjamin Franklin declared that unless the
immigration from the continent is stopped the English language
will cease to be the language of the country. Also in spite of the
fact that William Penn showed himself to be an able forerunner
of the present day immigration agent in the manner in which
he advertised the advantages of Pennsylvania, we find that at
that early day others were deploring the fact that those who were
coming were very inferior to those who had come with the first
ships. It is remarkable what virtues priority seems to give in the
eyes of many !
After the country became fairly well populated there was a
period of indifference to the subject and it was only in 1882 that
any effort towards regulating immigration was undertaken by
the government.
1 Printed by The American Sociological Society and The Committee of One
Hundred, Federal Council of Churches in America, August, 1915.
224
THE IMMIGRANT WOMAN 225
At the present time I might characterize the attitude of most
of our citizens as one of questionings if not of hostility, toward
unrestricted immigration.
In spite of the attention which has been directed to the subject
in the past ten years when we have been receiving annually over
one million aliens, most legislation has been abortive and un-
related to the crux of the matter. The cause of this confusion in
legislative enactment is due largely to the fact that none of
the political parties and no candidates for election have had the
courage to define their position upon this subject for fear of losing
the naturalized vote. To my mind the hyphenated American
citizen is as much interested in a sane and intelligent solution
of this question as the native-born. He has sought this country
for larger social or economic opportunities and frequently has a
greater appreciation of American institutions than those born
under the Stars and Stripes. A pertinent question for every
native son of the United States to ask himself, especially those
of colonial descent, whose fathers' blood made possible this
government and who with bloodless effort availed themselves
of the treasures that nature had stored up in geological periods,
is : If I had not been born to this heritage of freedom would
I have had the courage to claim it? Upon his ability to
answer this subject in the affirmative rests their position as
the leaders of the future destinies of this republic ; if answered
in the negative, no adventitious circumstances, no pride of birth,
no unjust laws can build a fortress around them sufficient
to protect them for long against the onward and irresistible
march of progress. I never see an alien woman in the street,
in her peasant costume, with the look of anxiety and often fear
on her face, that I do not mentally make obeisance to her,
for I question if I would have the bravery to do what she
has done.
What she has done, it did not matter how circumstance
pressed. And so we pay, one way or another, for all that we have,
it does not matter in what form it comes. Now that Nature has
been tanied, the only way that we can hope to keep alive the
splendid pioneer spirit of our ancestors is to stand on the
frontiers of moral reform and to be the adventurous bowman for
civil economic and religious liberty.
226
THE NEW IMMIGRATION
Easy living, easy dying is as true of the national as of the
physical body.
While there is nothing startlingly new in the general subject of
immigration the problem of the unattached alien woman is new
in its present form.
.We who traceour^ ancestry back to the colonial days, rather
resent having our attention callecTto the fact that large numbers
of women who were deported from Great Britain to the colonies
and whose progeny were doubtless absorbed into some of the
first families for eligible females were rather scarce in those days.
A picture of what the inhumanity of man caused some of those
first alien women to suffer has come down to us in that wonderful
classic "Manon Lescaut." If you want to know what our civiliza-
tion has cost alien women, read some of the official manuscripts
preserved in the Library at Paris, of the settlement of Louisiana.
A young friend of mine went to Paris to prepare a thesis upon
the settlement of Alabama, and she told me the horrors that were
revealed to her in those musty documents were unbelievable.
Let us not forget that much of the civilization of America was
built upon the sufferings of alien women and that the ties
which bound together the thirteen colonies were cemented with
their blood.
But it is with the alien woman of to-day that I have to deal.
The movement of unattached women of every nationality is
a significant feature of the day. It is an unmistakable sign of
her unrest and dissatisfaction of the old order. Even our own
daughters prefer occupation far from their home in the majority
of cases. This practice on the part of American women has
affected European women. \ Formerly men of the family came
first. Now it is not at all unusual to find women coming first and
sending back for the men of the family. Many have said to me
that American women do not have to have a home. Why should
they? A boarding house answers every purpose.
In considering the alien woman it is safe to say that if you
multiply the injustices which alien men are subjected to it will
not exaggerate her plight. All that he suffers she suffers also
and added to it the burden incident to her sex.
If the injustice is economic and he is a married man, the woman
must stretch the family purse to meet the demands of the family,
THE IMMIGRANT WOMAN 227
and if any member must go without, it is always the mother. Is it
any wonder that foreign children are so often ashamed of their
mothers because they are so different from other children's
mothers and because of this drift away from her wholesome
influence ? If we believe that in a well-ordered American home,
the mother should be the center, is it not time we took some for-
ward step which will lead to some permanent constructive meas-
ures that will dignify the alien mother who is often an uncrowned
heroine ? Something has been done at Hull House by establishing
a museum of hand industries, but every locality should perfect
some machinery where the alien mother might have just rec-
ognition without having to wait to get to heaven to receive it.
The economic injustice to which the self-supporting alien
woman is subjected is well known. Usually unskilled and in-
capable of initiative, there are practically no labor unions which
are open to her and she has practically no redress from greedy
employers. Frequently I have had in my charge, in New York,
girls who had been employed in a private family for several
months and then have been taken out on the street and left, in
order that they might not be forced to pay them their earnings.
Sometimes it has taken weeks to find where the parties lived, for
as strange as it may seem, these girls often stay for months in a
house and never learn the name of the street. The number of
girls thus cheated must be enormous for their fear of the invisible
government often makes them afraid to make complaints, and it
is only the few cases that fall into the hands of some philanthropic
organization that are ever heard of.
Social injustice -is the alien woman's reward at every turn.
Even the legislation which is passed to protect her often becomes
a boomerang. The deportation acts of the Federal Department
of Immigration cover the punishment of those who contribute
to her delinquency as much as they punish her. In spite of this
fact and although the sympathy of the heads of the department
has always been with the friendless woman, minor officials have
seen in this law an opportunity to magnify their importance and
to swell the amount of work they have accomplished, have been
indefatigable in arresting women, but strange to say are very
unsuccessful in finding the guilty male partner. A well-merited
rebuke was administered by a federal judge in San Francisco
228 THE NEW IMMIGRATION
lately when he declined to hold the woman until her partner
in crime was also arrested.
Nothing is more in keeping with the wishes of man when he
has gotten a woman in trouble than to have her deported and thus
put the ocean between them, thus ridding him of his incumbrance.
But I am glad to say that the recent order of the secretary of
labor and Commissioner-General Camineti, placing all women
held for deportation in the hands of a woman officer and in the
custody of some private society, preferably of her own nationality
and religion, assures every woman of having friends who will see
that justice is done her.
The difficulty of alien women_ get ting in touch with the best
class of her countrymen is another source of social injustice
and often sheer loneliness and the desire to talk to someone who
speaks her own language will cause her to seek companionship
among those, who, if other avenues were open to her, would not
attract her. In every city there are groups of those of the same
nationality, segregated into clubs, with different objects, all
giving opportunities for social companionship and development,
but these organizations are all for men. I know of none such for
women. True, there are national organizations for women but
they are invariably exclusive and the woman who needs them most
is not eligible for membership. If they are not exclusive the best
women of that race don't go to tnem. But it does not matter how
democratic a man's club may be you will find the leading citizens
of that nationality in the city belonging to them.
The importance of reaching the alien woman is paramount if
we are going to Americanize our foreign population. She is the
crux of the whole subject. It is she who selects the neighborhood
and the house in which the family live and the church which they
attend. She has the opportunity to supplement the lessons at
school and her attitude towards the problems of daily life un-
consciously are reflected in the other members of the family. In
the states in which women have the ballot she will be sought for by
the ward politician and her ideals of the ballot will reflect the
attitude of her teacher.
As some practical suggestions as to the means, I would rec-
ommend that every state pass a law similar to the California
law whereby teachers may be sent into the home to instruct the
THE IMMIGRANT WOMAN 229
mothers. That efforts be put forth by the men's clubs to form
national centers to which the mothers may be gathered and where
they will be addressed in their own language. That our national
holidays be set aside especially for the education in American
ideals. That special occasions of joy be participated in on the
national holidays of that nationality. That we educate ourselves
in the contributions that each nation has made to our literature
and that we voice our appreciation of these contributions.
That we see to it that the municipality is not lax in enforcing the
health laws in the foreign community and that if any part of
the municipality must suffer at the hands of the street cleaning
department it shall be other than the foreign district where
frequently the streets and alleys are often the only playgrounds
or parks. Neighbor liness on the part of the women of the com-
munity who have a recognized standing will do more to wipe out
the injustices than any other one thing. When the exploiters
find they have the club women of the community to deal with
they will be more careful or at least more guarded in their
approach. That the inferior courts, particularly the police courts,
be dignified and organized upon a basis that will command for them
the same respect as the superior courts, for it is in the police
courts that the alien usually gets his introduction to the legal
machinery of this country and his first impressions are the most
lasting.
That in each locality the district attorney's office set aside a
particular time, putting in charge one of his most efficient assist-
ants with a good interpreter, to hear the complaints of alien
women. That where there are juvenile courts, special probation
officers are detailed to get in touch with the foreign districts and
enlighten the mothers upon the scope and value of the juvenile
court, in order that when necessary she can use the court un-
officially. In this way the arrest of many children would be pre-
vented and the court would assist in upholding parental authority.
Many things which make for national deterioration are laid
at the door of the alien which do not rightly belong there. I
was interested to note at a recent disgusting performance I "\
attended there was not apparently a foreigner there. The \
audience was composed of well-dressed American boys and girls. 1
I could not help but think that if such a performance had been ^
23o THE NEW IMMIGRATION
given by foreign element the whole city would have rung with
theory that our American institutions, our American Sunday, were
being murdered by foreign influence.
The above suggestions are based upon the belief that it does not
matter how much we may disagree upon the policy of immigration,
that we are all agreed that after the alien has been admitted into
this country he is entitled not only to be given his just right but
also to have the best opportunity to become a good citizen.
V. EFFECTS
RACIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGRATION 1
LEON MARSHALL, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, UNIVERSITY
OF CHICAGO
^"PEAKING in broad general terms, this country has expe-
O rienced the inflow of three great sections of the human races
— European, African, and Asiatic. In the one we have a case of
voluntary immigration, and in the second a case of forced immi-
gration, and in the third a case of exclusion.
As the result of the forced immigration we have in the negro
an element containing n.6 per cent of our total population, or
more than one in ten, that for some reason or group of reasons —
whether historical accident or inferior ability or the ban of race
prejudice — has failed to be assimilated and now forms a most
serious problem in a democracy. We are far from the day when
arguments of either industrial development or mistaken self-
sacrifice would tempt us to repeat this particular experience.
In the case of the excluded element, the Chinese, we have
a race with many estimable qualities, a race furnishing excellent
material for self-sacrificing effort upon our part, a race anxious
to aid our industrial development by coming in what would have
been perhaps the largest tides of immigration we have ever ex-
perienced. Nevertheless they are a people that for racial, social,
political, and economic reasons 'we have decided to exclude.
Between these two extremes, — a race forced to immigrate
and one forbidden to immigrate, stand, or rather come, the Eu-
ropean races. Our prime concern is with them. With no other
defense for my classification than that it serves well for discussion
purposes and cannot be charged with inaccuracy or misrepresen-
tation,— when its difficulties have been frankly acknowledged,
— and with the further defense that this classification is coming
1 Reprinted from the Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and
Correction, 1906.
231
23 2 EFFECTS
to be accepted by many of the best scholars,! shall speak of three
races of Europe, the Baltic, the Alpine, and the Mediterranean.
The Baltic race occupies the British Isles, Scandinavia, the
southern and eastern shores of the Baltic in Russia, the northern
half of the German Empire, northeastern Holland, northern Bel-
guim, and northeastern France. In short, as the name indicates,
this race is concentrated around the Baltic sea and includes the
peoples of northwestern Europe.
The Alpine race dwells in Switzerland, northern Italy, cen-
tral France, southern Germany, and the greater part of 6-ussia
and of the Balkan Peninsula. In short, it occupies the great
highland region of central Europe.
The Mediterranean race has as its habitat Spain, Portugal,
the islands of the Mediterranean west of Italy, a strip of the
southern shore of France, and southern Italy. In a badly mixed
state it is to be found in Greece, and, mixed with Arab and Ne-
groid strains, it is to be found in Africa north of the Sahara and
west of Tunis. In brief, this race is concentrated in the sub-
tropical region around the Mediterranean.
*~ It is evident that in dealing with the effects of the immigra-
tion of these races we shall have to consider three matters :
1. The composition and quality of the population of this
country before the great tides of immigration began.
2. The volume and character of. the immigration.
3. The results, both present and future, of the interplay of
these forces.
Taking up these matters in turn, what was the character of
our population in 1790, the date of the first census? As we look
back over our colonizing agencies, we might at first glance think
of this population as being very heterogeneous. In New Eng-
land there were the Puritans; in Virginia, the Cavaliers; in
Maryland, the Catholics ; in New York, a strong Dutch element,
stronger than is generally supposed ; in Pennsylvania and Dela-
ware, one third of the population German or German descent ;
along the Delaware river, .the descendants of the Swedes ; in the
Carolinas, many villages of Highlanders and Huguenots, -v ap-
parently a population varied in race, nationality, religion, tastes,
and speech. And yet, a careful view of the evidence will cause
a reconsideration of that opinion.
RACIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGRATION 233
After all, this 1790 population was mainly of English descent.
The foreign element was a considerable portion in only a few of
the colonies, while in New England, then comprising in itself
about one third of the total 1790 population, there was perhaps
the purest representation of the English people in the world.
But whether of English descent or no, this 1790 population was
emphatically of Baltic origin. It may almost be said to be ex-
clusively Baltic, for the other elements are negligible, so much
so that it is difficult to enumerate any non-Baltic elements of the
whole population. Further, this population was, in the main, of
most excellent stock. It is true that many of the early comers
were mere adventurers and in some of the southern colonies
worse than adventurers ; it is true that in some of the colonies
there were convicts and indentured servants. Nevertheless the
fact of the excellent stock remains. The influence of the un-
desirables and adventurers was never dominant and diminished
as time went on; the convicts were often merely political
offenders — men who had reserved the right to think for them-
selves and so were the very best of colonists ; an important section
of the indentured servant class was composed of thrifty, ambi-
tious, progressive people who served out an indenture in order
to better their condition, and these were excellent colonists.
The rest of the population was well sifted indeed. It was com-
posed of men who had left their European homes because their
religious, social, political, or economic ideals were too large for
their surroundings, men who were sufficiently sturdy in mind and
body to overcome the perils and hardships of voyage and settle-
ment. The evidence is clear that in mental capacity, physical
qualities, and moral stamina these settlers were among the best
of their race and that the 1790 population was, in the main, of
excellent stock.
Finally, the conditions of life were such that this population
was not merely assimilated, but fused. The frontier life with its
dangers, hardshipsVand informal society ; with its cultivation of
the capacity for self-government and of the spirit of self-reliance ;
with its necessity for the breaking away from old world traditions
and performing tasks under American conditions, took but a gen-
eration to weld the population into one people, and even in the more
settled regions the same forces served as a strong fusing agent.
234 EFFECTS
Such was the 1790 population. Mainly English, certainly
Baltic, of excellent stock, rapidly becoming fused and amalga-
mated, for one half century these people reproduced their kind
and developed a national life and character. They increased with
f great rapidity — an averagejrate of over 34 per centjlecade by
! decade — until the population that had number edTbut 3,900,000
in 1790 was over 17,000,000 in 1840. In this entire period the
immigration they received was of the same Baltic type and was
insignificant in amount, for the total immigration from 1776 to
1820 did not exceed 250,000 and the great immigration did not
x begin until 1845.
This, then, is the people upon whom immigration is to work
its racial effects. Our next task is to estimate the volume and
character of the immigration. It is evident that our immigration
has come in waves, each larger than its predecessor, and since
so much of the total inflow since 1820 is recent, the more far-
reaching effects are to be realized in the future. It is further
evident that a great change has taken place in the character and
conditions of immigration. This question of changed character
opens a bitter controversy. Upon the one side are those who
point out that in the early immigration there were many un-
satisfactory elements. Upon the other side are those who contend
that to-day we are not only receiving inferior races, — we are
getting the inferior classes of these races, and they refer to the
immigrants of to-day as the beaten men of beaten races. Let us,
if possible, steer clear of this controversy. Both sides will, of
course, agree that there has been a change in the racial origin of
our immigration. Both sides will, probably, further agree that the
earlier immigrants were subjected to a sifting process that does
not apply to those of to-day. The nature of the causes of the
early immigration and the hard conditions of voyage and settle-
ment produced that sifting and sorting of the earlier period which,
according to Professor Ripley , resulted in our securing immigrants
physically above the average of the peoples from whom they came
and which must have similar effects upon mental and moral
qualities.
Both sides will probably further agree -that a change has
occurred in the conditions in this country. For, while we still
have many forces making for assimilation and while some of
RACIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGRATION 235
these forces are stronger than ever, nevertheless the immigrant of
to-day comes to a land where there is a labor problem, where the
free public lands which permitted the dispersion of his predeces-
sors and were the escape valve of the nation, are no longer avail-
able, where such development has taken place that we are now
turning back upon ourselves, where the social organism has be-
come so large that the formation of inner classes is readily possi-
ble, and where such concentration of nationalities has already |
taken place that many assimilative forces haveTbeen seriously \
impeded. In this connection it should be noted that the changes
which have taken place in this country are of such a kind and
character that they will be more and not less pronounced in the
years to come.
In our discussion thus far we have seen the character of
the population upon which immigration was to work its effects
and we have seen the volume and the changed conditions of that
immigration. We come now to our third problem, the outcome,
the, race effects, fcet u"s again avoid controversial matters as far
as may be. Clearly there are but two great elements to 'w con-
sidered. One of these is heredity; that is, the permanent race
traits and characteristics of those who form and are to form ow
population. The other is environment, both social and physical.
Now since the changed character of immigration has been a
thing comparatively recent let us hinge our further discussion
upon this fact of changed character and inquire : ist. What were
the effects of the earlier immigration? 2d. What are to be the
effects of the present and future immigration?
As to the racial effects of the earlier immigration time will
only permit a couple of propositions that I am content to let
stand or fall according to their own inherent reasonableness.
The first of these propositions is that the early immigrant
did not produce any very serious racial change, (i) His environ-
ment was such as to render him entirely American. The qualities
possessed both by him and by his new home rendered assimilation
easy and rapid. (2) His racial traits were practically identical
with the racial traits of those whom he found here. He was
Baltic (undoubtedly there were some bad elements in this early
tide, however) and he was but added to a Baltic population.
(3) His method of selection was, upon the whole, most excellent ,
236 EFFECTS
We have already seen that, by the very force of circumstances,
those early immigrants were physically, mentally, and .morally
the pick of the nations from which they came. True it is that at
certain times undesirable classes came, but perhaps this may
not have been so much an argument against the entire body as
an argument for some sane restriction or regulation of immigra-
tion even at this early period.
The second proposition is that while the earlier immigration
did not, in the elements it contributed, produce serious racial
change, it is at least an open question as to whether it did not
check the increase of the population of colonial descent. That
there has been a great decline in the birth rate of the original
(colonial) stock there can be no possible doubt. Had no decline
taken place, our population from native stock alone would to-day
amount to some 100,000,000 and the element of " colonial de-
scent" would to-day be three times as large as the element of
" immigrant descent," according to some authorities.
But was this decline due to immigration? In answering this
question, it should be frankly recognized upon the one hand that
if immigration did so operate, it was doubtless but one of several
forces acting in the same direction, though possibly a very im-
portant one. It should be as frankly recognized, upon the other
hand, that it is never possible to establish with mathematical ex-
actness a relation of cause and effect in elusive social phenomena.
All that can be done is to present the usual evidence and each
must be convinced or not convinced according to his estimate of
the value of the evidence.
1. Part of this evidence is the evidence of authority, that is,
the statements of many families and many earnest students, in
short, those in a position to know, as to what has taken place.
There may be said to be a very considerable agreement upon this
matter.
2. But aside from the evidence of authority, it is urged that
what little we understand of the laws of population and its in-
crease renders it quite probable that a causal connection should
exist between immigration and the checking of native increase.
It is argued that the presence of the immigrant and his compe-
tition should be expected to give a sentimental and an economic
cause for a check to the increase of population, — a generalization
RACIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGRATION 237
that would apply with particular force to our original Baltic
stock which had great race pride and a strong desire to give its
children every advantage.
3. It is further pointed out that the decline of the native
stock began and kept pace with the flow of immigration. This
may, of course, have been a coincidence, but the facts are beyond
dispute that in the period from 1790-1830, a period of practically
no immigration, our population increased decade by decade at
an average rate of 34.5 per cent, while in the period from 1830-
1860, a period of great immigration, the native stock retarded
its increase so that the average rate of increase of the whole
population was only 34.7 per cent.
4. Again, it is urged that, as far as can be determined,
this decline in the native stock took place mainly in those regions
in which the immigrants concentrated. This, also, may have
been a coincidence, but it does seem possible to trace a connection *
between large families of native stock and districts not invaded
by immigration. It seems to be true of whole sections such as the
South, of single states such as West Virginia, and even of small
districts within states.
5. Another argument that is advanced is that in the period
1830-1860, the time when the checking of the native stock began,
other causes for this checking are hard to establish. It is pointed
out that this was a period more favorable to life and reproduction
than was the period before 1830. The pressure of city life was
not yet heavily felt, for even in 1850 the urban population was
but 12.5 per cent of the total; the average density of popula-
tion was only 7.9 per square mile ; there were great areas of
public lands open, and, further, great progress had been made in
medicine, food, and clothing. And yet it is in this period that
the native stock begins to limit its increase.
6. A final bit of evidence rests upon the recent investiga-
tions of population in the coal fields. These investigations seem
to indicate that even as the earlier immigrant checked the increase
of native stock, so the immigrant of to-day is checking the in-
crease of the earlier immigrant stock. If this be true, its impor-
tance can scarcely be overestimated, for it would indicate that
immigration not only has been, but will continue to be, a process
of replacement rather than of addition. It puts us face to face
238 EFFECTS
with a vital question as to the future composition of our
people.
By way of final statement as to the effect of our early im-
migration it seems pretty clear that, while undoubtedly it con-
tained elements not ideal, it did not produce racial change be-
cause, Baltic itself, it was added to a Baltic population in such a
way and under such conditions that it was readily assimilated.
It is not so certain, however, but that it did cause a decline of
the native birth rate and so served to replace our native popu-
lation, and whether this was desirable or no each must decide
for himself.
We come now to the effects, present and future, of the Alpine
and Mediterranean immigration to-day. Time will permit only
\ a series of short propositions concerning this recent immigration.
1. As far as can be predicted to-day, the change in the
character of immigration is to become more marked and its vol-
ume is to increase. The origin of our immigration is swinging
more and more to the east and, judging from the data now at
hand, such as the trend of statistics, the lines of steamship devel-
opment, the tapping of new centers of population in Asia by
railroad lines, the attitude of the immigrants, and investigations
such as those of Mr. Brandenburg, — judging from this and other
data, unless conditions change or restriction takes place, it is not
merely present immigration but that of ten or fifteen years hence
that should command our attention. Under present laws and
regulations this immigration will doubtless continue to flow as
long as there is any difference of level in the status of Europe
and America. Mr. Bryce called this "drainage," and Prof.
Walker referred to it as "pipe line immigration." We need not
/ commit ourselves to these rather offensive terms, but we cannot
1 close our eyes to the fact that the essential features of the propo-
\ sition are fairly defensible. Inasmuch as there is great doubt
I whether emigration from Europe has in the least diminished the
pressure of population or has greatly raised the standard of
living there, the possible proportions of the problem are fairly
j clearly indicated.
2. Assuming these conditions of changed character and
increased volume, there will undoubtedly be considerable racial
change. Indeed, competent authorities assert that a change is
RACIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGRATION 239
already noticeable in regions in which our newer immigrants
have concentrated. If this be true to-day there can be little
doubt but that the future has in store considerable changes if the
tide of immigration flows unchecked. And this will be especially
the case if it be true that immigration so affects the principle of
population that our present stock is replaced rather than supple-
mented by the new arrivals.
3. The third proposition must be put in the form of a
question. Will this changejbe a, good or a bad one? Here, of
course, is tlie crux of the whole matter. In order to avoid a con-
troversy that could not possibly be satisfactorily treated in the
time at my disposal, I am sure I shall be pardoned if I merely
indicate some of the questions to be answered if one is to arrive
at a sane judgment on this matter. Discussion of these questions
may the more readily be omitted since practically every one has
already reached some conclusion as to most of them.
But before proposing this series of questions it should be
noted that it is not safe to try to reach any conclusion by that
overworked argument as to the mixture of races. The trouble
with the argument is that it proves nothing either way. It proves
nothing historically, contrary to public opinion, for while some
mixed races have been successful, others have been most wretched
failures. Further, anthropology and ethnology frankly admit 4
they can predicate nothing frorrTrmxture of races, nothing opti- j
mistic, nothing pessimistic. It is simply an argument of little or ]
no scientific value.
We must abandon the popular mixture of races argumenl^-y
and turn to the fundamental elements of the problem ; upon the
one hand environment, both social and physical, upon the other
hand race characteristics. Since the physical environment is a
matter which we can control but little and one that operates upon
all, we may omit it in this discussion and then the questions to
be answered are fairly obvious. Are the permanent racial char-
acteristics, — those they will retain after they, have changed na-
tionality, religion, tongue, and customs, — are these permanent
racial characteristics of the newcomers such as will be satisfactory
to a democracy ? Are they by racial disposition fitted or unfitted
for the exercise of political rights ? Undoubtedly, they, like all
other peoples, have some bad qualities. Will these qualities
240
EFFECTS
change with a change of environment, or are they inbred and
permanent? Suppose, for the sake of the argument, that immi-
gration means replacement, are we willing to turn over to ele-
ments other than Baltic the control of the future of the nation ?
Would it be a good, a bad, or an indifferent thing if in the future
the race composition of this nation should be such that the Baltic
element would, compared with the other elements, hold some
such position as the descendants of colonial stock hold? In
a word, are the permanent race traits of the newcomers equal
in quality to those of. the present stock ? We must remember
that, as Professor Commons says, "race and heredity form the
raw material, education and environment form the tools to
fashion social institutions."
And as to environment. Here a series of questions arises,
and to discuss any one of them in even a cursory manner would
require a whole paper in itself. It deals with the effect of the
present immigrant upon a list of matters ranging through disease,
illiteracy, pauperism, crime, tendency to form classes, standard
of living, and a host of others, not the least important of which
is the fact that since the so-called lower classes are the classes
with large families, from the racial point of view it is highly
worth considering who are to compose the lower classes. Then,
too, we should not forget that the future aspects of this problem
are the important ones. Suppose, for the sake of the argument
at least, that the number coming is to increase and the change in
racial origin to become more marked, what then? These are
some of the questions to be considered.
And must the whole discussion end with a question? Yes
and no. As far as it can be treated in a short paper merely in-
tended to outline the nature of the problem — yes, though that
is doubtless displeasing to the mind that demands a short, satis-
factory answer, whether true or false. But the matter is not
altogether indefinite. Some few things are pretty clear: (i)
This people, before the great tides of immigration began, was
mainly Baltic and mainly of excellent stock. (2) This people has
been influenced to a considerable degree by immigration. Prob-
ably the racial effects of the early immigration were not great,
but to-day conditions are different. There has been a change in
the racial origin of our immigration, a change in the method of
RACIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGRATION
241
selection, and a change in the conditions of this country. (3) If
present conditions, laws, and tendencies continue (a large "if,"
this), there will clearly be considerable racial change in the future.
Whether such a change would be a good or a bad thing, each
must decide for himself, and it rests with the American people to
decide whether for their own interests and for the interests of the
world in general they desire the change.
IMMIGRATION AND THE MINIMUM WAGE1
PAUL U. KELLOGG, A.M., EDITOR, The Survey
9
THE line of least resistance in extending the protection of the
state over labor conditions has been to enact laws with
respect, to women and children. The world-old instinct of the
strong to shelter the weak has led the conservative to join forces
with the radical, in prohibiting child labor and in shortening the
hours of women's work. On the other hand the liberty loving
tradition of a male democracy has more often than not thrown
the balance on the other side of the scale when the exercise of
public control over men's labor has been under discussion.
This tendency has been repeated in the movement toward mini-
mum wage legislation. The voluntary Massachusetts law which
goes into effect this year concerns women and children ; and so,
too, does the compulsory statute which has just passed the
Oregon legislature. Public discussion the past winter has centered
around relation between the low. wages paid working girls and
prostitution.
Accident legislation is an exception to this tendency in the field
of labor legislation. We do not think of limiting compensation
laws to the girls who lose an eye or a hand ; we are perhaps
even more concerned that industry bear its human wear and tear
when workingmen are crippled or their lives snuffed out. The
explanation is, of course, a simple one; in this connection we
conceive of the workingman as the breadwinner of a family
group ; and in self -protection American commonwealths are
belatedly devising schemes of insurance which will safeguard
those dependent upon him.
J As we come to look at the problem of living wages more closely,
Jmy belief is that legislatures and courts will increasingly take
1 From the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,
July, 1913.
242
IMMIGRATION AND THE MINIMUM WAGE 243
cognizance of the household and community well-being which
hangs on the earnings of men. It is this aspect which makes the
question of the minimum wage as it concerns common labor —
;,nd as it is aggravated by immigration — if anything, more
serious than the question of the minimum wage as it concerns
women.
We have seen whole cities scotched by the floods. Our self-
er grossed neglect of the water courses of the midwestern basin,
tho encroachments of private holdings upon the beds of streams,
and the persistent stripping of their woodsy sources have brought
a retribution. The nation leaps to tardy relief as the waters
bur^t the dams, strangle men and women, and swamp the cities in
their course. Dwellings go under before men's eyes and whole
communities which have taken their security for granted see
store and street and familiar meeting place sunk in currents over
which t'vey have lost control. It has all been spectacular and
vivid. Ti e laws of gravitation and of fluids, the "Mene, Mene,
Tekel" of LTIOW private ends and of public preoccupation have
been written . irge in mud and privation. Misery has daubed its
lesson up and dovvn the river valleys for all men to read.
The economic ebb and flood of our common life has usually no
such spectacular appeal to the imagination ; yet, if we turn to the
forty volumes of the federal immigration commission — volumes
which, seemingly, Congress has done its best to keep from general
reading — we find a story of household wreckage and of the slow
undermining of community life as real as this seven days' wonder
of the Ohio Valley. They show us that in the states east of the
Rocky Mountains the basic industries are to-day manned by
foreigners three to two ; that there are as many names on these
pay-rolls from eastern Europe and Asia as there are names of
native-born and second generation Americans put together. They
do not show that the new immigrants have hired out as common
laborers for less pay than the old did in their time, for the revolu-
tionary rise in prices throughout the period under discussion
must be taken into account. But they go far to show that the
newcomers have at least kept down wages and have perpetuated
other standards against which the older men were ready to
protest. Of the heads of foreign households tabulated by the
commission, seven out of ten earned less than $600 a year,
244 EFFECTS
while among the native-born the proportion was only four out cf
ten. Of the foreigners very nearly four out of ten earned undt;r
$400 a year, or an average, this last year, of less than $1.50 per
working day. In less than four out of ten of the foreign-born
households were the husband's earnings depended upon as the
sole sources of family income.
^ In a word, the immigration commission's report was an ext m-
sive exhibit that the American day laborer's pay is less thaa a
living wage for a workman's family by any standard set by any
reputable investigation of the cost of living; that the bultc of
day laborers are immigrants ; that their numbers and industrial
insecurity are such as to perpetuate these low pay levels and to
introduce and make prevalent lower standards of living- than
customary among the workmen they come among.
The commission's figures are such as to give strength to the
searching charge of the immigration res trie tionists th?rc "so long
as every rise of wages operates merely to suck in unlimited thou-
sands of the surplus population of Europe and Asia . no permanent
raising of our own standards can be hoped for.'
Nine out of ten of the common laborers of America are to-day
of the new immigration. A light is thrown on why they lend
themselves to exploitation by the facts that before coming only
a third of these eastern Europeans and Asians can read and
write ; that half are peasants and farm hands ; that only an
ighth are labor unionists ; and that nearly afif th have never in
their lives worked at wages. Neither in literacy^ industrial skill,
money-wisdom, nor cohesive strength are they as self-resourceful
as the men of the immigration which preceded them, much less of
the native-born. More important to my mind than the fact that
before coming a third are unlettered, is the fact that nearly a
fifth have never worked for wages before coming.
We have assumed that the economic law of supply and demand
would bring a wholesome equilibrium to this inrush of the terrible
flood. As well count on trie law of gravitation to solve the flood
problem of the Miami. That law is, to be sure, the ultimate rule
of physics on which any scheme of flood prevention must be
based. Water is health-giving, thirst-quenching, power-giving,
beneficial ; gravity holds the world to its course ; but left to their
own devices water and mass attraction may become brute forces
IMMIGRATION AND THE MINIMUM WAGE 245
for destruction. So, too, the unregulated forces of an economic
immigration.
Let us consider some of the social reactions which these forces,
left to their own devices, have exacted.
They have changed the make-up of entire communities among
us. During the Westmoreland coal strike, whole villages of
miners were evicted with their families from the company houses
and new miners installed. But what happened thus overtly in
strike time has been going on slowly and half -noticed throughout
western Pennsylvania for twenty years. The function of the
old pick miners has been largely done away with. With the
coming in of new methods and mine machinery, their labor
organizations have been driven out, and they, themselves, have
left the Connellsville region for the new fields of the middle West
and Southwest, where the pressure of competition by recent
immigrants is not so strong. Churches, lodges, the whole slow-
growing fabric of English-speaking community life, have been
supplanted by a new order. And not only have the immigrants
dislodged the earlier races from their footing, but their own indus-
trial tenure is insecure. Dwellers in company houses, whole
communities, live by sufferance of the mine operators who can
call in new greeners to take their places.
The effect on household life has been as disturbing as that upon
community life. At these low economic grades people live on the
boarding boss system, one woman cooking, washing, and keeping
house for from two to twenty lodgers who sometimes sleep two
shifts to a bed.
It might be thought that the immigrants' desire to save is
responsible for these results. In part that is true. As the Pitts-
burgh survey pointed out, a single man can lay by a stocking
full at this barracks life ; a boarding boss can get ahead at cost
of a dead baby or two, or his wife's health ; a whole family can
eat, sleep, and live in a single room ; but the foreigner who takes
America in earnest and tries to settle here and support a family,
must figure closer than our wisest standard of living experts
have been able to do, if he succeeds in making good on a day
labor wage. The Buffalo survey found #1.50 as the common
labor rate in that city in 1910. The maximum income which a
common laborer can earn working every day but Sundays and
246 EFFECTS
holidays at $i .50 per day is #450 a year ; bad weather, slack work
and sickness, cut this down to #400 for a steady worker Yet the
lowest budget for a man, his wife and three children which Buffalo
relief workers would tolerate was $560^ There is a deficit here of
#160 which must be made up by 'skimping or by income from other
sources, and that deficit is as much as the man himself can earn by
four months' solid labor. Yet this budget called for but three
small rooms, for five people, to sleep, eat, and live in ; called for
but 5 cents a week for each one of the family for recreation and
extravagance. How people make shift against such odds was
illustrated by one household where in a little room 6 feet by 9,
a room which had no window at all to let in air, they found two
cots each with a man in it, and a bed which held two young
men and two girls, one of whom was thirteen years old. This
was not a house of prostitution. It was a family which had
taken in lodgers to increase its income.
Household and community life are further affected by the in-
filtration of women-employing trades in centers of immigrant
employment; and with it the spread of the family wage, not
the family wage earned by the man, but the family wage earned
by man, woman, and children all together, such as is the curse of
Fall River and the cotton towns of Massachusetts.
The New York bureau of labor statistics has just issued its
report on the Little Falls strike, the first adequate pay roll
investigation ever made in New York at the time of a strike
against a reduction in wages. Nearly half of the men were found
to be receiving #9 a week or less. Nearly 24 per cent were
receiving not over #7.50 per week ; 48^- per cent of all the women
employed were receiving $7.50 or less and 30 per cent received
#6 or less. The official figures taken from the pay rolls by the
bureau of labor statistics tended to justify substantially what the
strikers had alleged as to their wages. The testimony of the
employers before the bureau of arbitration that the wages
paid in Little Falls were not less than those paid in other mills
in the district indicates that here is a problem not of one locality
alone. "The one outstanding and unavoidable conclusion of this
report," says the bureau of labor statistics, "is that there is need
of a thorough and general investigation of the cost of living among
the textile workers of the Mohawk Valley."
IMMIGRATION AND THE MINIMUM WAGE 247
This trend toward the family wage is a matter of much concern
to the state of Pennsylvania in the years ahead, with the coming of
textile mills to the coal regions, and with the widespread develop-
ment of the state's water power. I was told at the time of the
strike in the railroad shops at Altoona — it may be hearsay,
but there was truth in the underlying tendency — that in the
councils of the local Chamber of Commerce the Pennsylvania
Railroad had been averse to inducing any metal trades establish-
ments to settle in Altoona. The reason ascribed by my informant
was that these establishments would have competed as em-
ployers in hiring mechanics and the men's wages would have
gone up locally. But invitation to textile mills was encouraged
- textile mills which would employ wives and daughters and
increase family incomes while lessening the tuggingsTal the car
shop pay roll.
Let me cite a case brought out last year at a hearing before
the New Jersey immigration commission. This was an account
book of a methodical German weaver in a Passaic woolen mill.
It illustrates the soil in which the revolutionary labor movement
is taking root so fast and which the sanctioned institutions of
society, in more than this solitary instance, have failed to con-
serve. The man is forty-five years old, a weaver of twenty-
seven years' experience, and his expertness as a workman is, it
was said, shown by the fact that he had seldom or never been
fined for flaws in his work — one of the grievances most keenly
felt by a majority of the strikers. The record showed a total
income of $347.40 for nine months. And a careful estimate
put the annual earnings on which this father of thirteen — three
now " under the ground," three now old enough to work — could
count upon from his own efforts in bringing up his family, as
less than $500.
The record revealed much else, good and bad, besides this
blighting total. In the first place it showed the seasons. Except
in bad years the woolen trade is said to have no period of shut
down. But July and August are slack months and the short
hours worked flattened out his pay envelopes for weeks at. a time.
Settlement and charity organization workers know that there
is nothing that tends toward demoralization in a family like an
unsteady income — up and down. No pay at all was received by
248 EFFECTS
this weaver for the week of June 12 (fifty-five hours' work).
His explanation was that some wool is bad and requires constant
mending, keeping the output low, .that pay was strictly based
on the number of yards turned out, and that no payments were
made until a certain quantity was on hand. This no-pay week
was followed by a low pay week of June 19. That is, after two
weeks' work amounting to no hours at the looms, with practi-
cally no fines for flaws, a weaver of twenty-seven years' experience
took home #6.65. It is this SQrt_of^ pressure which sends the
women and children of a householdto the mills.
IWeTmay differ as to the desirability of the 'entry of women into
industry, and as to its- effect on the women and on the home ;
but we should be united in holding that if the women go into
the world's work, their earnings should lift the joint income to
new and higher levels, and not merely supplement the less than
family wage paid the man ; add two and two, only to find that the
resulting sum is two.
It is to be said for this onrush of international workmen that
they have supplied a flexible working force to American manu-
facture and have stimulated industrial expansion beyond all
bounds. But against these gains must be set off the fact that they
have as powerfully accentuated city congestion and all its attend-
ant evils, and have aggravated unemployment. The immigra-
tion commission found that in some industries the oversupply of
unskilled labor had reached a point where a curtailed number of
working days results in a yearly income much less than is indi-
cated by the daily rate paid.
A more serious aspect of the situation is that changes in machin-
ery are adapted to the permanent utilization of these great
masses of crude labor — 60 per cent of the whole force in steel
production for example. The old time ditch diggers and railroad
construction gangs paved the way for our city trades and train
crews. They were building foundations for normal work and
life. They appealed to the get ahead qualities in men. The
new day labor is a fixed, subnormal element in our present
scheme of production fit stays yit will "continue to stay so long as
back muscles are cheaper than other methods of doing the work.
My own feeling is that immigrants bring us ideals, cultures,
red blood, which are an asset for America or would be if we gave
IMMIGRATION AND THE MINIMUM WAGE 249
them a chance. But what is undesirable, beyond all peradven- /
ture, is our great bottom-lands of gmVk-cashT low-mcorne^em-
ployments in which they are bogged. X We suffer not because
the immigrant comes with a cultural deficit, but because the
immigrant workman brings to America a potential economic
surplus above a single man's wants, which is exploited to the
grave and unmeasured injury of family and community life
among us.
I have reviewed the situation much along the lines in which it
impressed me two years ago, at a time that the immigration report
was first given to the public. What have we done about it in those /
two years — or for that matter, in the last decade ?
What have we Americans done ? I am afraid the cartoonist of j
the future is going to have good cause to draw the present day 1
manufacturer pleading with one hand for federal interference \
against his foreign competitors, and with the other beckoning to I
the police to protect him against strike riots ; but resisting with \
both hands every effort of the public to exert any control what- 1
ever over his own dealings with his work people. Petty magis-
trates and police, state militia and the courts — all these were
brought to bear by the great commonwealth of Massachusetts,
once the Lawrence strikers threatened the public peace. But
what had the great commonwealth of Massachusetts done to
protect the people of Lawrence against the insidious canker of
subnormal wages which were and are blighting family life? Do
not mistake me : The exceptional employer has done courageous
acts in standing out for decent wages in the face of competition
from those who are not squeamish in their treatment of their
help; but employers as a body have quite failed to impose
minimum standards on the whole employing group; and the
exploiters have brought whole trades into obloquy.
Nor have the trade-unions met any large responsibility toward
unskilled labor. Through apprenticeship, skill, organization, they
have endeavored to keep their own heads above the general
level. Common labor has been left as the hindmost for the
devil to take. The mine workers and brewers and some few other
trades are organized industrially from top to bottom, every man
in the industry ; but for the most part common laborers have
had to look elsewhere than to the skilled crafts for succor.
250
EFFECTS
They have had it held out to them by the I. W. W., which
stands for industrial organization, for one big union embracing
every man in the industry, for the mass strike, for benefits to
the rank and file here and now, and not in some far-away political
upheaval. This is what has given the revolutionary industrialists
their popular appeal, so disturbing both to the old craft unions
and the socialist party. We may or may not like the temper of
Mrs. Pankhurst's methods, but we recognize the suffrage cause
as something which transcends the tactics of the militants. In
the same way it can be said for Haywood and his following that
they have sounded the needs of common labor and held up hope
for its rank and file with greater statesmanship, sympathy, and
structural vision than all the employers and craft unions put
together. At such a juncture the ordinary American may well
ask himself if a general upheaval of society is the sole way open
in which the evils of unskilled, low-paid labor can be mastered
by a resourceful people.
The only recent schemes of trade organization which match
the I. W. W. in democratic promise are the protocol agreements
in the women's garment trades in New York. These are open to
all workmen in the trades ; they stand for minimum standards,
and they employ the joint force of organized employers and
organized employees, to whip the black-sheep shop into line.
Yet as I see it, here again the pressure of immigration is a twofold
threat to the permanence of these plans — the competition with
New York by outside garment centers where immigrants can
be exploited without let or hindrance; and the retardation of
wage advances at New York due to the glut of immigrant labor
at the great port.
So much for voluntary action. What has the state done to
throw social control over common labor? Very little. Child
labor legislation staves off a season or two the inflow of immature
workers into the unskilled labor market. Laws prohibiting the
night work of women have eased the sex-competition for jobs
at some few points. As already stated, minimum wage legis-
lation has been limited to date to women and children. When by
indirection the new 54 hour law for women tended to raise pay
for both men and women in the mills of Lawrence, the manu-
facturers risked the great strike rather than raise it. Political
IMMIGRATION AND THE MINIMUM WAGE 251
advantage has led city administrations to pay common labor
more than private employers, but in general the public has done )
nothing to control the wages of common labor.
The measure calculated to affect them most markedly has been
the immigration restriction legislation which passed both houses
of Congress at the last session, but which was vetoed by the
President.
The immigrant commission held that to check the oversupply
of unskilled labor a sufficient number of immigrants should be J
debarred to produce a marked effect. This was their major /
recommendation, and as the most feasible method to carry it out ^
they favored the exclusion of all those unable to read and write
some language.
As a quantitative check this literacy test can be successfully
defended. It will unquestionably shut out large numbers of
immigrants and that reduction in the gross number of job-
hunters could scarcely fail to raise common labor pay and im-
prove conditions of life at the lowest levels.
^ As a selective method the literacy test has been sharply and I
think successfully challenged. The people let in and those shut
out could not be confidently described, the one group as desirable,
the other as not.
As an obstruction to the political and religious refugees, who in
addition to their other oppressions have been deprived of school-
ing, the literacy test arouses the opposition of social and liberty-
loving groups on all hands. On this rock restriction legislation
split on the last Congress, as it has split for years past.
In its failure, in the failure of any other proposal to materially
improve common labor standards I venture to put forward a
plan which has not been combated in any quarter in ways
convincing to me either as to its illogic or its impracticability.
My plea is to apply the principle of child labor legislation to our
industrial immigration — to draft into our immigration law the
provision that no immigrant who arrives here after a specified
date shall be permitted to hire out to a corporate employer for
less than a living wage — say $2.50 or $3 a day — until five years
are elapsed and he has become a naturalized citizen. When he
is a voter, he can sell his American work-right for a song if he
must and will, but until then he shall not barter it away for less
252
EFFECTS
than the minimum cash price, which shall/ be determined as a
subsistence basis for American family livelihood. I would make
this provision apply also to all immigrants now resident in the
United States who have not filed notice of their intention of
becoming citizens by the date specified.
It would not be the intent or result of such legislation to pay
new-coming foreigners $3 a day. No corporation could hire
Angelo Lucca and Alexis Spivak for $3 as long as they could get
John Smith and Michael Murphy and Carl Sneider for less. It
would be the intent and result of such legislation to exclude
Lucca and Spivak and other "greeners" from our congregate
industries, which beckon to them now. It would leave village
and farming country open to them as now. And meanwhile as
the available unskilled labor supply fell off in our factory centers,
the wages paid Smith, Murphy, Sneider and the rest of our resi-
dent unskilled labor would creep up toward the federal minimum.
First a word as to the constitutionality of such a plan. It
would be an interference with the freedom of contract ; but that
contract would lie between an alien and a corporation, between
a non-citizen and a creature of the state. I have the advice of
constitutional lawyers that so far as the alien workman goes, the
plan would hold as an extension of our laws regulating immigra-
tion. On the other hand, the corporation tax laws afford a
precedent for setting off the corporate employer and regulating
his dealings. Recent decisions of the supreme court would
seem to make it clear that such a law could be drafted under the
interstate commerce clause of the constitution.
For three special reasons my belief is that the general enforce-
ment of such a law would be comparatively simple. Sworn state-
ments as to wage payments could be added to the data now
required from corporations under the federal tax law. This would
be an end desirable in itself and of as great public importance
as crop reports. In the second place, every resident worker would
report every violation that affected his self-interest or threatened
his job. For my third reason, I would turn to no less a counsel
than Mark Twain's "Pudd'n Head Wilson," and with employ-
ment report cards and half a dozen clerks in a central office in
Washington, could keep tab on the whole situation by means of
finger prints. Finger prints could be taken of each immigrant
IMMIGRATION AND THE MINIMUM WAGE 253
on entry ; they could be duplicated at mill gate and mine entry
by the employer, filed and compared rapidly at the Washington
bureau.
As compared with joint minimum wage boards affecting men
and women alike, as do those of Australia and England, the
plan would have the disadvantage of not being democratic.
The workers themselves would not take part in its administration.
But such boards might well develop among resident unskilled
labor, once the congestion of immigrant labor was relieved.
And 'the plan would have the signal advantage of being national,
so that progressive commonwealths need not penalize their
manufacturers in competing with laggard states.
As compared with the literacy test the plan would not shut
America off as a haven of refuge and would not, while it was
under discussion, range the racial societies and the international-
ists alongside the steamship companies and the exploiters of
immigrant labor. And it would have an even more profound
influence on our conditions of life and labor.
What then are the positive goods to be expected from such a
program ?
1 . It would, to my mind, gradually but irresistibly cut down
the common labor supply in our industrial centers.
2. Once the unlimited supply of green labor was lessened in
these industrial centers, a new and more normal equilibrium
would be struck between common labor and the wages of com-
mon labor. Now it is like selling potatoes when everybody's
bin is full.
3. It would tend to stave off further congestion in the centers
of industrial employment and give us a breathing spell to conquer
our housing problems and seat our school-children.
4. It should shunt increasing numbers of immigrants to the
rural districts and stimulate patriotic societies to settle their
fellow-countrymen on the land.
5. It would tend to cut down the accident rate in industries
where greeners endanger the lives of their fellows.
6. It would cut down the crowd of men waiting for jobs at
mill gate and street corner, correspondingly spread out rush and
seasonal work, and help along toward that time when a man's
vocation will mean a year-long income for him.
254 EFFECTS
7. It would give resident labor in the cities a chance to
organize at the lower levels and develop the discipline of self-
government instead of mob action.
8. It would put a new and constructive pressure on employers
to cut down by invention the bulk of unskilled occupations, the
most wasteful and humanly destructive of all work.
9. It would bring about a fair living, a household wage, in
such routine and semi-skilled occupations as remained.
10. It would tend to change mining settlements and mill
towns from sleeping and feeding quarters into communities.
IMMIGRATION AND THE LIVING WAGE
JOHN MITCHELL
THE present year has witnessed an immigration to this
country greater than any that has ever occurred in the
history of any nation. During the year ending June 30, 1903,
857,000 people from various parts of the world landed at the
ports of the United States and either settled in the seaboard
cities or made their way into the interior. At no time in the
history of the world has a movement of such stupendous pro-
portions taken place. The immigrants to this country in the
single year 1903 were probably much in excess of the total
number of arrivals in the present territory of the United States
during the two centuries from 1607 to 1820.
The movement of immigrants from Europe to the United
States during the last three generations has dwarfed by com-
parison all former movements of populations. During this period
over twenty million immigrants have landed on these shores.
These men, hailing from all the countries of Europe and of the
world, have peopled the vast territory of the United States,
have intermarried with one another and with the native stock,
and have formed the American nation as it exists to-day. In
the cities of our seaboard, in the Middle West, on the trans-
Mississippi prairies, and throughout the broad expanse of our
Northwest, in almost every state north of Mason and Dixon's
line, and extending from the Atlantic, to the Pacific, large sections
of the population are either foreign-born or the children of
immigrants. In the year 1900 there were over ten million persons
in the United States of foreign birth and over twenty-six million
of foreign birth or foreign parentage. About two fifths of all
the white inhabitants of the United States are the sons or
daughters of parents one or both of whom are foreign-born.
These immigrants and children of immigrants represent some of
the best elements in the American population, and the American
255
256 EFFECTS
citizens of foreign birth and parentage are, on an average, as
patriotic, as loyal, and as valuable citizens as those of native
ancestry.
The tide of immigration to the United States has had many ebbs
and flows. Immigration has steadily increased, reaching a
maximum point in periods of prosperity and falling off greatly
in periods of depression. In the year 1854 immigration reached
a high water mark with the arrival of 428,000, and in 1882
789,000 landed. This point was not again reached until the
present year, 1903, when 857,000 immigrants arrived.
Within the last two decades a change has taken place in the
character of immigration, which in the eyes of many people
portends evil for American workmen. In the early years of
immigration, when it was difficult, if not actually dangerous, to
come to the United States, there was a natural selection of the
best and hardiest inhabitants of the old world, men willing
to risk 'their all in going to a new country. The greater ease and
cheapness of transportation have now given a stimulus to large
classes of persons who in former years could not have come. The
cost of transportation and the time required have, upon the
whole, been reduced, and the sources of immigration have also
shifted. Formerly, the great majority of immigrants came from
England, Ireland, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries,
from countries, in other words, where conditions of life and labor
were, to some extent, comparable to those of the United States.
At the present time, the source of immigration has shifted from
northern and western to eastern and southern Europe, and from
men with a higher to men with a lower standard of living. I
do not desire to state that the moral character and mental
capacity of the new immigrants are lower than, those of the im-
migrants of former days ; but it is quite clear that the standard
of living has been reduced in consequence of the change in the
source of immigration from countries in which wages are high
to countries in which wages are low. The amount of money
which the average immigrant brings with him has steadily de-
creased, and the immigrant from southern and eastern countries
has, at the start, a smaller sum to protect him from starvation
or the sweatshop than has the immigrant from northern or
western Europe. The illiteracy of the immigrant has also become
IMMIGRATION AND THE LIVING WAGE 257
more pronounced. This illiteracy, amounting in some cases
from sixty-five to seventy-five per cent, debars the newly arrived
immigrant from many trades, makes it more difficult for him to
adapt himself to American conditions and American manners of
thought, and renders it almost inevitable that he fall into the
hands of the sweater and exploiter. The efforts made by steam-
ship companies to incite and overstimulate the immigration of
thousands of illiterate peasants tend to inject unnaturally into the
American labor market a body of men unskilled, untrained, and
unable to resist oppression and reduced wages.
The practically unrestricted immigration of the present day
is an injustice both to the American workingman, whether native
or foreign-born, and to the newly landed immigrant himself.
As a result of this practically unrestricted and unregulated
immigration, the congestion of our large cities is so intense as
to create abnormally unhealthy conditions. In New York,
which has at present a foreign-born population of over one and
one quarter millions, the congestion has resulted in the erection of
enormous tenement buildings, in the fearful overcrowding of the
slums, and in the normal presence of an oversupply of unskilled
labor. The arrival in great numbers of immigrants without
knowledge of English, without the ability to read or write the
language of their own country, without money, and sometimes
without friends, renders it inevitable that they accept the first
work offered them. The average immigrant from eastern 'and
southern Europe brings with him from eight to ten dollars,
which is about the railroad fare from New York to Pittsburg and
is hardly sufficient to support him for two weeks. It is inevitable,
also, that he remain where he lands and take the work offered
him on the spot. The result is a supply of labor in the large
cities in excess of a healthy demand, and a consequent lowering
of wages, not only in the cities in which the immigrants remain,
but in those in which the articles are produced that compete with
the sweatshop products.
From the point of view of the great employers of labor there
is an apparent advantage in keeping the doors wide open. The
great manufacturers of the country, while anxious to shut out
the products of the pauper labor of Europe, desire to have as
much cheap labor within their own factories as possible. The
258 . EFFECTS
great mine owners have eagerly taken advantage of the ever
flowing current of low-priced labor, not only to reduce wages,
but to hold this reserve army of unskilled workers as a cTulTOver
the head of the great mass of employees. The immigrant who
comes here in the hope of bettering his condition, is subjected
to the exhausting work of the sweatshop, is forced to toil ex-
cessively long hours under unsanitary conditions, or is compelled
to perform work under the padrone system, and is liable to be
exploited and defrauded in many ways. The apprenticeship of
the newly arrived immigrant is hard indeed, but it could very
well be remedied if the state should so regulate immigration as
to enable the newcomer to protect himself from extortion and
exploitation.
The extent to which immigration, if unrestricted, might go
was foreshadowed by the influx of Chinese which began about a
generation ago. For a number of years the doors of the United
States were thrown wide open to the importation of immigrants,
practically, if not legally, under contract, from a country with a
population of four hundred millions. The result of this immigra-
tion was seen in a reduction of the wages of labor upon the
Pacific coast ; and there can be no doubt that the admission of
Chinese, if unchecked, would have resulted in the creation of
an enormous Mongolian population in our West and the practical
industrial subjugation of that portion of the country by the
Chinese. It is a well-known fact that the cheaper worker, when
he is able to compete tends to drive out the better, just as in the
currency of a nation, bad money will drive out good money.
Through the activity of the trade-unions, however, the Chinese
were, in 1882, excluded and in 1902 this law was reenacted.
The trade-unions also secured, in the year 1885, the enactment
of a law rendering illegal the importation of workmen under
contract. Formerly, in the case of a strike, the employer was
able to contract for the importation of large numbers of foreigners,
who, with lower ideals and without any knowledge of American
trade-unionism, took the places of the strikers and effectually
aided the employer. The trade-unions have also been energetic
in their attempts to secure a further regulation of the conditions
of immigration in such a manner that both the present
inhabitants of the United States and the immigrants who come
IMMIGRATION AND THE LIVING WAGE 259
will be in a better position to resist exploitation by employers
in the sweated or unskilled trades.
The attitude of trade-unionists upon this question favors not *
prohibition, but regulation. The trade-unions do not desire to i
keep out immigrants, but to raise the character and the power of I
resistance of those who do come. There is no racial or religious \
animosity in this attitude of unionists. The American trade-
unionist does not object to the immigration of men of a high
standard of living, whether they be Turks, Russians, or Chinese,
Catholics, Protestants, or Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists, or
Confucians, whether they be yellow, white, red, brown, or black.
In certain cases, as in that of the Chinese, it was absolutely
essential to the success of the law that it discriminate against
the whole nation, but the attitude of the unionist was not hos-
tility to the Chinaman, but a determination to resist the immi-"
gration of men with a low standard, of living.
The trade-unionist believes that the policy of regulating immi-
gration is justifiable on both ethical and economic grounds.
It is admitted that the immigration of the past has to a large
extent and for a long period benefited the American working-
man. Especially was this true during the period before the
public domain was exhausted, when men could secure a home-
stead for the asking. The trade-unionist also realizes that a large
percentage of the most worthy citizens, and probably a majority
of the white manual laborers of the United States, are either
foreigners or sons of foreigners. The American unionist sym-
pathizes with the oppressed workingmen of foreign countries
and feels that everything should be done to ameliorate their
condition, provided it does not hinder the progress of the nation
and the welfare of the human race. Cosmopolitanism, like
charity, begins at home. The American people should not sacri- 1
fice the future of the working classes in order to improve the con- I
ditions of the inhabitants of Europe, and it is even questionable j
whether an unregulated immigration would improve the condi-
tions of Europe and Asia, although it is certain that it would
injure and degrade the conditions of labor in this country.
This point might be illustrated by the supposition of an
unrestricted immigration from China. That country has a
population of about four hundred millions and a probable birth
V
26o EFFECTS
rate of about twelve millions a year. It is quite conceivable with
unrestricted immigration and with the cheapening of fares from
Hong Kong to San Francisco that within fifty or a hundred years
a third of the people of the United States could be Chinese,
without in any way reducing the population of China. The
creation of an outlet for a million or two millions of Chinese
immigrants each year would merely have the effect of increasing
the birth rate in that country, with the result that within a
century a majority of the working people of this country would
be Chinese, while the congestion of population in the Celestial
empire would be as great and as unrelieved as ever. To a large
extent the progress of nations can best be secured by the~pblTcy
of seclusion and isolation. By means of barriers which regulate,
but do not prohibit, immigration, the various countries of Europe
if and America can individually work out their salvation, and a
\ permanent increase in the efficiency and remuneration of the
workers of the world can thus be obtained. By the maintenance
( of these barriers the best workingmen in each country can rise
I to the top, and the great mass of the workingmen can secure a
I larger sliare of the wealth produced. If, however, it is within the
power of employers to drawTreely upon the labor of the world,
while protecting their products from the competition of foreign
manufacturers, the result will be that the workingmen of the
world will have their wages reduced, or, at all events, will not
have their remuneration increased, as would be possible under a
policy regulating the importation of immigrants.
The trade-union desires to regulate immigration partly in
order to prevent the temporary glutting of the market, but to a
much greater extent in order to raise the character of the men
who enter. The glutting of the labor market through immigra-
tion is, I believe, temporary, and not permanent. It causes a
temporary oversupply of labor in the large cities; a breaking down
of favorable working conditions, a disintegration of trade-unions,
and a widespread deterioration and degradation in large circles
of the community. Gradually, however, the market absorbs the
fresh supply of labor, and the newly arrived immigrants create
a demand for the products of their own work. While this tem-
porary glutting of the market is disadvantageous and may result
in a deterioration of the caliber of the workingman, the injury
IMMIGRATION AND THE LIVING WAGE 261
that comes from permitting the inflow of vast bodies of men with
lower standards of living is infinitely worse. The policy of
trade-unions in this matter of immigration is in perfect harmony
with other features of trade-union government. Trade-unionism/
seeks not to restrict the numbers, but to raise the quality, off
workingmen. Any one may become a bricklayer in New York!
city, whether there be a hundred, a thousand, or five thousand,!
but whosoever enters the trade as a unionist must agree not to)
accept less than a certain rate and must, therefore, be an efficient!
worker with a high standard of life. The American workingmanj
believes that there is ample room in this country for all men who
are able and willing to demand wages commensurate with the
American standard of living.
By a wise policy of restriction of immigration and by a careful
sifting of immigrants according to their ability to earn and
demand high wages, the country would secure annually, let us
say, two or three or four hundred thousand good immigrants,
instead of being forced to absorb, as at present, six or eight or
ten hundred thousand immigrants, many of them undesirable.
The result of this policy might lead eventually even to an actual
increase in the number of immigrants, owing to the fact that if
there were a wise selection of immigrants with a high standard of
living, wages in the United States would rise to a point which
would attract the most capable workmen of all Europe. A con-
tingency of this sort would be looked forward to with hope rather
than with apprehension, since the American nation need never
fear the immigration of Europeans so long as that immigration
does not involve or threaten a reduction in the standard of living.
The competition of the immigrant with a low standard of
living is felt not only in the trade, wherein the immigrant is
employed, but in all the trades of the country. The immigrant,
with his low rate of wages, drives out of his trade men formerly
employed therein, who are either forced down in the scale
of wages or else obliged to compete for work in higher occupa-
tion, where they again reduce wages. Thifc the effect of the
competition of immigrants is felt not only in the unskilled, but
also in the semi-skilled and skilled trades, and even in the pro-
fessions. The immigration of great bodies of unskilled workmen,
moreover, of various races tends to promote and perpetuate racial
262 EFFECTS
antagonisms, and these racial jealousies are played upon by
employers in the attempt to reduce wages, to prevent the forma-
tion of trade-unions, and to keep the workmen apart.
I do not desire in this book to outline what I consider reasonable
measures of regulation for the ever-rising tide of immigration.
The American Federation of Labor has done excellent work in
advocating wise measures, and the work should be continued
along these lines. Restriction, however, should be without
prejudice and without hatred. It should be as much in the
interest of the immigrants as in the interest of the American
citizens of to-day, whether of native or of foreign birth. Re^
slriction should be democratic in its character, and should not
exclude any man capable of earning his livelihood in America
- at the standard union rate of wages. It should not be directed
by racial animosity or religious prejudice, and the laws that are
passed should protect the immigrant from deception by steam-
ship or employment agents, as well as protect the home popu-
lation from undesirable immigrants. The law should be so
arranged as not needlessly to separate members of the same
family. Finally, trade-unionists in their advocacy of immigration
should not be actuated by a short-sighted policy, but by a
consideration of the probable effect that such restriction will have
upon the future prosperity of the working classes or of Americans
in general.
The task which trade-unions have accomplished in securing
and enforcing laws regulating immigration has been hardly
more important than their excellent work in raising the tone and
increasing the efficiency of the immigrant upon his arrival. More
than any other single factor, except the common school, the trade-
union has succeeded in wiping out racial animosities, in uniting
-jf men of different nationalities, languages, and religions, and in
infusing into the newly landed immigrant American ideals and
American aspirations. The United Mine Workers of America,
for instance, has had marvelous success in creating harmony and
good feeling among*its members, irrespective of race, religion, or
nationality. The meetings of the locals are attended by members
of different races and are addressed in two, three, or even more
languages. The constitution and by-laws of the organization are
printed in nine different languages, and by means of interpreters
IMMIGRATION AND THE LIVING WAGE 263
all parts of the body are kept in touch with one another, with
the result that a feeling of mutual respect and confidence is
promoted.
In no other country have trade-unions had to face a problem of
such enormous difficulty as the fusion of the members of these
various nationalities, crude, unformed, and filled with old-world
prejudices and antipathies. No higher tribute can be paid to
American trade-unions than an acknowledgment of the magnifi-
cent work which they have accomplished in this direction in
obliterating the antagonisms bred in past centuries and in creating
out of a heterogeneous population, brought together by the ever-
lasting search for cheap labor, a unified people with American
ideals and American aspirations.
IMMIGRATION AND CRISES1
HENRY PRATT FAIRCHILD, PROFESSOR OF THE SCIENCE OF SOCIETY,
YALE UNIVERSITY
AMID all the diverse views on the various aspects of the
immigration problem, there is coming to be a practical
unanimity of opinion on one fundamental proposition — namely,
that immigration to-day is essentially an economic phenomenon.
However strongly the desire for political or religious liberty, or
the escape from tyranny, may have operated in the past to
stimulate emigration from foreign countries, the one great motive
of the present immigrant. is the desire to better his economic
situation. Even in cases where political and religious oppression
still persists, it usually expresses itself through economic dis-
abilities. The great attraction of the United States for the
modern immigrant lies in the economic advantages which it
has to offer. The latest authoritative recognition of this fact
is that given by the Immigration Commission, which emphasizes
it in numerous places in its repqrt. If, then, immigration is so
closely bound up with the industrial situation in this country,
it would seem that there should be some relation between immi-
gration and the industrial depressions or crises which are such
a characteristic feature of our economic life. It is the purpose
of this paper to seek to determine what this relation is. One
aspect of the matter is perfectly obvious and has been thoroughly
recognized for a long time, namely, that the volume of the immi-
gration current is regulated by the industrial prosperity of this
| country. A period of good times brings with it a large volume of
immigration, while hard times reduce the current to a minimum.
This has been worked out statistically by Professor John R.
Commons, and is presented in graphic form in a chart in his
book, "Races and Immigrants in America." Imports per capita
are taken as the best indication of prosperity in this country,
1 From The American Economic Review, December, 1911
264
IMMIGRATION AND CRISES 265
and the curve which represents this factor is shown to be almost
exactly similar to the one representing the number of immigrants
per 10,000 population.
Another fact which is equally obvious, and which has been
given much prominence in recent years, is that a period of depres-
sion in this country is followed by a large exodus of aliens. The
popular interpretation of this fact is that this emigration move-
ment serves to mitigate the evils of the crisis by removing a
large part of the surplus laborers, until returning prosperity
creates a demand for them again. The Italian, who displays the
greatest mobility in this regard, has been called the safety valve
of our labor market. Thus the movements of our alien popula-
tion are supposed to be an alleviating force as regards crises.
How well this interpretation fits the facts will appear later.
Professor Commons takes a different view of the matter, and in
another chapter of the book quoted demonstrates how immigra-
tion, instead of helping matters, is really one of the causes of
crises. His conclusion is that "immigration intensifies this
fatal cycle of ' booms*' and ' depressions/ " and " instead of increas-
ing the production of wealth by a steady, healthful growth, joins
with other causes to stimulate the feverish overproduction,
with its inevitable collapse, that has characterized the industry
of America more than that of any other country." The few pages
which Professor Commons devotes to this topic are highly sug-
gestive, and so far as the present writer is aware, contain the best
discussion of the subject which has yet been offered. Professor
Commons, however, at the time this book was written, was handi-
capped by the lack of certain data which have since become
available. Up till 1907 no official records were kept of departing
aliens, and no exact information as to their number was avail-
able. But beginning with July of that year, the reports of the
Commissioner-General of Immigration have furnished these
figures, and the recent reports contain tables almost as complete
for departing as for arriving aliens. Furthermore, within this
period the United States has experienced, and recovered from,
a severe depression, so that the material is at hand for a concrete
study of the matter in question.
Immigrant aliens are those whose last permanent residence
has been in some foreign country and who have come to the
266 EFFECTS
United States with the expressed intention of residing here
permanently. Nonimmigrant aliens are of two classes : those
whose last permanent residence was in the United States, but
who have been abroad for a short time, and those whose last
permanent residence was abroad, but who come to the United
States without the intention of remaining permanently, including
aliens in transit. Emigrant aliens are those whose last permanent
residence has been in the United States and who are going abroad
with the intention of residing there permanently. In all cases,
the expressed intention of the alien is accepted in regard to
residence, and an intended residence of twelve months consti-
tutes a permanent residence either in the past or future. Thus
there are" six distinct classes of aliens, coming and going, and the
way is open for some very complicated comparisons. For our
present purposes, however, it is not necessary to make these
comparisons. As far as aliens in transit are concerned, they
are counted as arrivals at the port of entry, and as departures
at the port of exit, so that they cancel, and do not affect the
net increase or decrease of population. Th'ey do not affect the
labor market, as they are supposed to pass by a direct and
continuous journey through the territory of the United States
within thirty days, otherwise the head tax is not refunded. The
other classes of nonimmigrant and nonemigrant aliens should
rightfully be included in the table for the present study, as they
affect the labor market. Particularly those incoming aliens who
are "nonimmigrant" because their last permanent residence
was in the United States, and those "nonemigrant" aliens who
are such because they are leaving the country only for a short
time include, to a great extent, just those individuals in whom
we are most interested. The tables of arrivals and departures
by months do not differentiate the two classes of nonimmigrant,
and the two classes of nonemigrant, aliens, so that it is impos-
sible to make monthly comparisons of these factors. Fortu-
nately, as stated above, it is not necessary for our present
purpose ; the totals of arrivals and departures of all classes of
aliens are a sufficient general indication of the movements which
we wish to study. A more detailed examination of the make-
up of the stream of arrivals and departures, by years, will be
given later.
IMMIGRATION AND CRISES 267
Turning then to the table, we observe that the monthly aver-
age of arrivals during the first six months of 1907 was a high one.
Following a large immigration during the last six months of the
preceding year, this made the fiscal year ending June 30, 1907,
the record year for immigration in the history of the country.
For the next four months the stream of immigration continued
high, considering the season, and the number of departures was
moderate. Early in October, however, there were signs of dis-
turbance in the New York Stock Exchange. On the sixteenth
there was a crash in the market, and within a week the panic
had become general. It reached its height on October 24, and
continued for many weeks after. The response of the alien
population to this disturbance was almost immediate, and mani-
fested itself first in the emigration movement. In November
the number of departures almost doubled. But the immigrants
who were on the way could not be stopped, and in spite of the
large exodus, there was a net gain of 38,207 during the month.
The next month, December, however, saw a marked decrease
in the stream of arrivals, which, accompanied by a departure
of aliens almost as great as in November, resulted in a net de-
crease in population of 11,325 for the month. During the first
six months of 1908 the number of arrivals was small, and the
departures numerous, so that, with the exception of March,
each month shows a net loss in population. During July the
number of departures began to approach the normal (compare
the months in 1908 with 1907 and 1910), but the arrivals were
so few that there was still a decrease for the months of July and
August. In September, 1908, the balance swung the other way,
and from that time to the present every month has shown a
substantial increase in population through the movement of
aliens.
Thus we see that the period during which the number of alien
laborers in the United States was decreasing was confined to the
months December, 1907, to August, 1908, inclusive. By the end
of July, 1908, the effects of the crisis were practically over as far
as departures are concerned. It is evident, then, that the effects
of the crisis on emigration were immediate, but not of very long
duration. During the months of November and December, 1907, v
when the distress was the keenest, there were still large numbers
268 EFFECTS
of aliens arriving. But when the stream of immigration was once
checked, it remained low for some time, and it was not until
about January, 1909, that it returned to what may be considered
a normal figure. The reasons for this are obvious. The stream
of immigration is a long one, and its sources are remote. It takes
a long time for retarding influences in America to be thoroughly
felt on the other side. The principal agency in checking immigra-
tion at its source is the returning immigrant himself, who brings
personal information of the unfortunate conditions in the United
States. This takes some time. But when the potential immi-
grants are once discouraged as to the outlook across the ocean,
they require some positive assurance of better times before they
will start out again.
Now what catches the public eye in such an epoch as this, is
the large number of departures. We are accustomed to immense
numbers of arrivals and we think little about that side of it. But
heavy emigration is a phenomenon, and accordingly we hear
much about how acceptably our alien population serves to accom-
modate the supply of labor to the demand. But if we stop to add
up the monthly figures, we find that for the entire period after
the crisis of 1907, when emigration exceeded immigration, the
total decrease in alien population was only 124,124 — scarcely
equal to the immigration of a single month during a fairly busy
season. This figure is almost infinitesimal compared to the total
mass of the American working people, or to the amount of unem-
ployment at a normal time, to say nothing of a crisis. It is thus
evident that the importance of our alien population as an alleviat-
ing force at the time of a crisis has been vastly exaggerated.
The most that can be said for it is that it has a very trifling
palliative effect.
The really important relation between immigration and crises
is much less conspicuous but much more far-reaching. It rests
upon the nature and underlying causes of crises in this country.
These are fairly well understood at the present time. A typical
crisis may be said to be caused by speculative overproduction,
or overspeculative production. Some prefer to call the trouble
underconsumption, which is much the same thing looked at
from another point of view. Professor Irving Fisher has furnished
a convenient and logical outline of the ordinary course of affairs.
IMMIGRATION AND CRISES 269
In a normal business period some slight disturbance, such as an
increase in the quantity of gold, causes prices to rise. A rise in
prices is accompanied by increased profits for business men, be-
cause the rate of interest on the borrowed capital which they use
in their business fails to increase at a corresponding ratio. If
prices are rising at the rate of two per cent annually, a nominal
rate of interest of six per cent is equivalent to an actual rate of
only about four per cent. Hence, doing business on borrowed
capital becomes very profitable, and there is an increased demand
for loans.
This results in an increase of the deposit currency, which is
accompanied by a further rise in prices. The nominal rate of
interest rises somewhat, but not sufficiently, and prices tend to
outstrip it still further. Thus the process is repeated, until the
large profits of business lead to a disproportionate production of
goods for anticipated future demand, and a vast overextension
of credit. But this cycle cannot repeat itself indefinitely. Though
the rate of interest rises tardily, it rises progressively, and even-
tually catches up with the rise in prices, owing to the necessity
which banks feel of maintaining a reasonable ratio between loans
and reserves. Other causes operate with this to produce the
same result. The consequence is that business men find them-
selves unable to renew their loans at the old rate, and hence
some of them are unable to meet their obligations, and fail.
The failure of a few firms dispels the atmosphere of public confi-
dence which is essential to extended credit. Creditors begin to
demand cash payment for their loans ; there is a growing demand
for currency; the rate of interest soars; and the old familiar
symptoms of a panic appear. In this entire process the blame
falls, according to Professor Fisher, primarily upon the failure
of the rate of interest to rise promptly in proportion to the rise
in prices. If the forces which give inertia to the rate of interest
were removed, so that the rate of interest would fluctuate readily
with prices, the great temptation to expand business unduly
during a period of rising prices would be removed. It may well
be conceived that there are other factors, besides the discrepancy
between the nominal and real rates of interest, that give to
business a temporary or specious profitableness, and tend to
encourage speculative overproduction. But the influence of the
27o EFFECTS
rate of interest resembles so closely that resulting from immi-
gration, that Professor Fisher's explanation is of especial service
in the present discussion.
The rate of interest represents the payment which the entre-
preneur makes for one of the great factors of production -
capital. The failure of this remuneration to keep pace with the
price of commodities in general leads to excessive profits and
overproduction. The payment which the entrepreneur makes
for one of the other factors of production — labor — is repre-
sented by wages. If wages fail to rise valong with prices the effect
on business, while not strictly analogous, is very similar to that
produced by the slowly rising rate of interest. The entrepreneur
is relieved of the necessity of sharing any of his excessive profits
with labor, just as in the other case he is relieved from sharing
them with capital. It would probably be hard to prove that the
increased demand for labor results in further raising prices in
general, as an increased demand for capital results in raising
prices by increasing the deposit currency. But if the demand
for labor results in increasing the number of laborers in the
country, thereby increasing the demand for commodities, it
may very well result in raising the prices of commodities as
distinguished from labor, which is just as satisfactory to the
entrepreneur. This is exactly what is accomplished when un-
limited immigration is allowed. As soon as the conditions of
business produce an increased demand for labor, this demand
is met by an increased number of laborers, produced by immi-
gration.
In the preceding paragraph it has been assumed that wages
do not rise with prices. The great question is, is this true ? This
is a question very difficult of answer. There is a very general
impression that during the last few years prices have seriously
outstripped wages. Thus Professor Ely says, " Wages do not
usually rise as rapidly as prices in periods of business expansion."
R. B. Brinsmade stated in a discussion at the last meeting of
the American Economic Association that "our recent great rise
of prices is acknowledged to be equivalent to a marked reduction
in general wages." Whether this idea is correct, and if correct,
whether this effect had transpired in the years immediately
previous to 1907, cannot be definitely stated. The index
IMMIGRATION AND CRISES 271
numbers of wages and prices given in the -Statistical Abstract of
the United States, for 1909 (p. 249), seem to show that during
the years 1895 to 1907 money wages increased about pari passu
with the retail prices of food, so that the purchasing power of
the full-time weekly earnings remained nearly constant.
But whether or not money wages rose as fast as prices in the
years from 1900 to 1907, one thing is certain, they did not rise
any faster. That is to say, if real wages did not actually fall,
they assuredly did not rise. But the welfare of the country
requires that, in the years when business is moving toward a
crisis, wages should rise ; not only money wages, but real wages.
What is needed is some check on the unwarranted activity of the
entrepreneurs, which will make them stop and consider whether
the apparently bright business outlook rests on sound and per-
manent conditions, or is illusory and transient. If their large
profits are legitimate and enduring, they should be forced to
share a part of them with the laborer. If not, the fact should
be impressed upon them. We have seen that the rate of interest
fails to act as an efficient check. Then the rate of wages should
do it. And if the entrepreneurs were compelled to rely on the
existing labor supply in their own country, the rate of wages
would do it. Business expands by increasing the amount of labor
utilized, as well as the amount of capital. If the increased labor
supply could be secured only from the people already resident
in the country, the increased demand would have to express itself
in an increased wage, and the entrepreneur would be forced to
pause and reflect. .But in the -United States we have adopted
the opposite policy. In the vast peasant population of Europe
there is an inexhaustible reservoir of labor, only waiting a signal
from this side to enter the labor market — to enter it, not with a
demand for the high wage that the business situation justifies,
but ready to take any wage that will be offered, just so it is a
little higher than the pittance to which they are accustomed at
home. And we allow them to come, without any restrictions
whatever as to numbers. Thus wages are kept from rising, and
immigration becomes a powerful factor, tending to intensify
and augment the unhealthy, oscillatory character of our indus-
trial life. It was not by mere chance that the panic year of
1907 was the record year in immigration.
272
EFFECTS
Against this point of view it may be argued that the legitimate
expansion of business in this country requires the presence of
the immigrant. But if business expansion is legitimate and per-
manent, resting on lasting favorable conditions, it will express
itself in a high wage scale, persisting over a long period of time.
And the demand so expressed will be met by an increase of native
offspring, whose parents are reaping the benefit of the high
standard of living. A permanent shortage of the labor supply
is as abhorrent to Nature as a vacuum. Expansion of any other
kind than this ought to be hampered, not gratified.
There is one other way in which immigration, as it exists at
present, influences crises. In considering this, it will be well to
regard the crisis from the other point of view — as a phenomenon
of underconsumption. Practically all production at the present
day is to supply an anticipated future demand. There can be
no overproduction unless the actual demand fails to equal that
anticipated. This is underconsumption. Now the great mass
of consumers in the United States is composed of wage earners.
Their consuming power depends upon their wages. In s^ far
as immigration lowers wages in the United States, or prevents
them from rising, it reduces consuming power, and hence is
favorable to the recurrence of periods of underconsumption.
It is not probable, to be sure, that a high wage scale in itself
could prevent crises, as the entrepreneurs would base their cal-
culations on the corresponding consuming power, just as they
do at present. But a high wage scale carries with it the possibility
of saving, and an increase of accumulations among the common
people. It is estimated at the present time that half of the
industrial people of the United States are unable to save any-
thing. This increase in saving would almost inevitably have
some effect upon the results of crises, though it must be confessed
that it is very difficult to predict just what this effect would
be. One result that might naturally be expected to follow would
be that the laboring classes would take the opportunity of the
period of low prices immediately following the crisis to invest
some of their savings in luxuries which hitherto they had not
felt able to afford. This would increase the demand for the
goods which manufacturers are eager to dispose of at almost
any price, and would thereby mitigate the evils of the depressed
IMMIGRATION AND CRISES 273
market. It is probably true that the immigrant, under the same
conditions, will save more out of a given wage than the native,
so that it might seem that an alien laboring body would have
more surplus available for use at the time of a crisis than a native
class. But the immigrant sends a very large proportion of his
savings to friends and relatives in the old country, or deposits
it in foreign institutions, so that it is not available at such a
time. Moreover, our laboring class is not as yet wholly foreign,
and the native has to share approximately the same wage as
the alien. Without the immense body of alien labor, we should
have a class of native workers with a considerably higher wage
scale, and a large amount of savings accumulated in this country,
and available when needed.
On the other hand, it may be argued that if the desire to pur-
chase goods in a depressed market should lead to a large with-
drawal of cash from savings banks and similar institutions, it
might tend to augment rather than alleviate the evils of a money
stringency. There seems to be much force to this argument.
Yet Mr. StreightofT tells us that in a period of hard times the
tendency is for the poorer classes to increase their deposits,
rather than diminish them. On the whole, it seems probable
that a large amount of accumulated savings in the hands of the
poorer classes would tend to have a steadying influence on condi-
tions at the time of a crisis, and that by preventing this, as well
as in other ways, immigration tends to increase the evils of crises.
In closing, it may be interesting to note what are the elements
in our alien population which respond most readily to economic
influences in this country, and hence are mainly accountable for
the influences we have been considering. As stated above, the
annual reports of the Commissioner General of Immigration give
very complete data as to the make-up of the incoming and out-
going streams by years. Thus in the fiscal year 1908 there were
782,870 immigrant aliens and 141,825 nonimmigrant aliens
admitted. Of the nonimmigrant aliens, 86,570 were individuals
whose country of last permanent residence and of intended future
residence were both the United States ; that is, they were alien
residents of this country who had been abroad for a brief visit.
These are the birds of passage in the strictest sense, in which we
shall use the term hereafter. In the same year there was a total
274 EFFECTS
exodus of 714,828 aliens, of whom 395,073 were emigrants and
319,755 nonemigrants. The former class includes those who have
made their fortune in this country and are going home to spend
it, and those who have failed and are going home broken and
discouraged — a very large number in this panic year. The
latter class includes aliens who have had a permanent residence
in the United States, but who are going abroad to wait till the
storm blows over, with the expectation of returning again —
true birds of passage outward bound. There were 133,251 of
these. The balance were aliens in transit, and aliens who had
been in this country on a visit, or only for a short time. In 1909
there were 751,786 immigrant aliens and 192,449 nonimmigrant
aliens. Of the nonimmigrants 138,680 were true birds of passage
according to the above distinction — a large number and almost
exactly equal to the number of departing birds of passage in
the previous year. The storm is over, and they have come back.
The departures in that year numbered 225,802 emigrant and
174,590 nonemigrant aliens. These numbers are considerably
smaller than in the previous year, but are still large, showing
that the effects of the crisis were still felt in the early part of
this fiscal year. The number of birds of passage among the non-
emigrant aliens, 80,151, is much smaller than in the previous
year. In 1910 there were 1,041,570 immigrant aliens and 156,467
nonimmigrant aliens. In the latter class, the number of birds
of passage, 94,075, again approximated the corresponding class
among the departures of the previous year. The departures in
1910 were 202,436 emigrant aliens and 177,982 nonemigrant
aliens, of whom 89,754 were birds of passage. This probably
comes near to representing the normal number of this class. A
careful study of these figures confirms the conclusion reached
above. While a crisis in this country does undoubtedly increase
the number of departing aliens, both emigrant and nonemigrant,
and eventually cuts down the number of arrivals, the total effect
is much smaller than is usually supposed, and taken in connection
with the fact that the stream of arrivals is never wholly checked,
the influence of emigration in easing the labor market is abso-
lutely trifling.
Comparing the different races in regard to their readiness to
respond to changes in economic conditions, it appears that the
IMMIGRATION AND CRISES 275
Italians stand easily at the head, and the Slavs come second.
In 1908, in the traffic between the United States and Italy,
there was a net loss in the population of this country of 79,966 ;
in 1909, a net gain of 94,806. In the traffic between this country
and Austria-Hungary there was a loss in 1908 of 5463 ; in 1909
a gain of 48,763. In the traffic with the Russian Empire and
Finland there was a gain of 104,641 in 1908 and a gain of 94,806
in 1909. This shows how unique are the motives and conditions
which control the migration from the two latter countries.
The emigrants from there, particularly the Jews, come to this
country to escape intolerable conditions on the other side, not
merely for the sake of economic betterment. They prefer to
endure anything in this country, rather than to return to their
old home, even if they could.
SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF RECENT IMMIGRATION
JEREMIAH N. JENKS, LL.D., AND W. JETT LAUCK, OF THE UNITED
STATES IMMIGRATION COMMISSION
MANY persons who have spoken and written of late years
in favor of restriction of immigration have laid great
stress upon the evils to society arising from immigration. They
have claimed that disease, pauperism, crime, and vice have been
greatly increased through the incoming of the immigrants.
Perhaps no other phase of the question has aroused so keen
feeling, and yet perhaps on no other phase of the question has
there been so little accurate information.
It is doubtful whether the increased number of convictions
for crime are found because more crimes are committed, or be-
cause our courts and the police are more active. It is probable
that we hear more of vice and immorality in these late days,
not because they are on the increase, but because people's con-
sciences have become more sensitive, and in consequence greater
efforts are made to suppress them.
It is certain that the injurious effect of most contagious diseases
has been very greatly lessened, and yet it is probable that we
hear more regarding contagious diseases now than ever before
because we have become more watchful.
The data regarding contagious diseases, pauperism, and crime,
in connection with the immigrants, are extremely meager and
unsatisfactory; but the Immigration Commission made the
best use possible of such data as exist, and it was able to institute
a number of inquiries which, though limited in extent, never-
theless have served to throw some light upon the relation of
immigration to these various social problems. Although it
seems probable that the injurious social effects of immigration
have been greatly exaggerated in the minds of many persons,
nevertheless it would be practically impossible to exaggerate
the social importance that might attach to immigration under
276
SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF RECENT IMMIGRATION 277
certain conditions. History and observation afford numberless
examples.
It is a generally accepted fact that, up to the time of the visita-
tion of the Pacific Islands by diseased sailors from Europe in
the early part of the last century, venereal diseases, as known in
Europe and America, did not exist in those islands, and that
their introduction by only a few sailors was largely responsible
for the ravages of these terrible diseases, unchecked by any
medical knowledge, that swept away in many instances a large
proportion of the entire population.
The entrance of an evil-minded man into a village community,
or one or two foul-minded boys into a school, is often enough to
affect materially the entire tone of the school or community.
It is important, therefore, that as careful consideration as possible
be given to these questions that have been so emphasized, and
that rigid measures be taken to check whatever evils may have
arisen.
LEGISLATION1
In earlier days neither the Federal Government nor State
governments had passed any laws to protect the United States
against the immigration of undesirable persons of whatever
kind. Even the energetic action of those promoting the so-called
"Native American" or "Know-Nothing" movements, from 1835
to 1860, resulted in no protective legislation. Indeed, these
movements were largely based on opposition to the immigration
of Catholics rather than to that of persons undesirable for other
reasons. In 1836 the Secretary of State was requested to collect
information respecting the immigration of foreign paupers and
criminals. In 1838 the Committee on the Judiciary of the House
of Representatives was instructed to consider the expediency
of providing by law against the introduction into the United
States of vagabonds and paupers deported from foreign countries.
Moreover, a bill, presented on the recommendation of the Com-
mittee, proposed a fine of $1000, or imprisonment for from one
to three years, for any master who took on board his vessel,
with the intention of transporting to the United States, any
1 Cf . for details, reports of Immigration Commission, Vol. XXXIX ; also Chap-
ter XVI.
278 EFFECTS
alien passenger who was an idiot, lunatic, one afflicted with any
incurable disease, or one convicted of an infamous crime. The bill,
however, was not considered. The early " Native American"
movement had been local, confined to New York City at first,
afterward spreading to Philadelphia, but in 1852 the secret
oath-bound organization that took the name of the American
Party, the members of which were popularly called the Know-
Nothings, came into national politics, and for a few years exerted
not a little power, carrying nine State elections in 1855. Later,
in something of a reaction against this " Know-No thing " move-
ment, which finally proposed only the exclusion of foreign paupers
and criminals, there was a definite effort made to encourage
immigration.
In 1864, on the recommendation of President Lincoln, a bill
encouraging immigration was passed. In 1866 a joint resolution
condemned the action of Switzerland and other nations in par-
doning persons convicted of murder and other infamous crimes
on condition that they would emigrate to the United States,
and in 1868 the encouraging act .was repealed.
Some of the States had provided for the collection of money
to support immigrants who had become public charges ; but
these laws were finally declared unconstitutional by the United
States Supreme Court, and in 1882 the first Federal Immigra-
tion Law was approved. This forbade convicts, except political
offenders, lunatics, idiots, and persons likely to become public
charges, to land. During the following years there was consid-
erable agitation for further restriction or regulation, which
culminated in 1888 in the selection of the "Ford Committee"
by the House of Representatives. In the testimony before the
committee it was shown that sometimes immigrants coming
by steamer to Quebec, within forty-eight hours of their arrival,
applied for shelter in the almshouses of the State of New York,
and like cases of gross abuse existed by the thousands.
No further legislation, however, was enacted until 1891, when a
bill was passed which added to the excluded classes persons suffer-
ing from a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease, and polyg-
amists, but from that time on there has been an earnest effort to
protect the United States against such undesirable immigrants.
SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF RECENT IMMIGRATION 279
DISEASED IMMIGRANTS
Our present law provides that in case of aliens who are debarred
for physical or mental reasons and whose disability might have
been detected by the transportation company through a compe-
tent medical examination at the time of embarkation, the trans-
portation company shall pay the sum of $200 and in addition
a sum equal to that paid by such alien for his transportation from
the initial point of departure indicated in his ticket to the port
of arrival, and such sum shall be paid to the alien on whose ac-
count it is assessed. In consequence of these and the precedi
regulations, the transportation of diseased aliens has becom
so unprofitable that the steamship companies have provided, a
the leading foreign ports, a medical inspection similar to tha
made in the United States.1
EFFICIENCY OF INSPECTION IN EUROPE
As a result of this inspection compelled by the rigid enforce-
ment of our laws at our port$ of entry, the number of persons/
debarred at American ports is relatively very small. In the fiscal]
year 1907, 1,285,349 aliens were admitted, while only 4400 were
debarred on account of physical and mental diseases. In 1914,
as against 1,218,480 aliens who entered, 11,068 were debarred.
The increase is due largely to the added efficiency of our medical
service. The fact that a large proportion of the immigrants
arriving in the United States come from countries where
trachoma, favus and other contagious diseases are prevalent
among the classes of the population from whom the immigrants
come, shows how careful the steamship inspection is.
A still further proof is that the persons excluded on account
of diseases from the ports of Italy, where the judgment of Ameri-
can medical officers is accepted as final, is slightly larger than
those rejected from some other countries where the inspection
is made solely by the physicians employed by the steamship
companies.
On the whole, the medical inspection of immigrants at foreign
ports, while not absolutely effective, seems to be reasonably
1 Immigration Act, 1917, Sec. 9.
28o EFFECTS
satisfactory. A considerable time must elapse between embarka-
tion at European ports and arrival in the United States. More-
over, doubtless, in spite of the best efforts that can be made,
there will be occasionally an avoidance of inspection ; but taking
all circumstances into account, the present control of immigrants
as regards contagious diseases seems to be quite satisfactory.
It has frequently been suggested that some system should
be devised by which immigrants may be inspected before leaving
their homes for a port of embarkation. Such an arrangement
would, of course, prevent many hardships now suffered by the
thousands that are annually turned back at foreign ports of
embarkation ; but this is a subject over which our government
has no supervision, the governments of the home countries being
the only ones which could take effective action.
The policy adopted by the United States, of holding steam-
ship companies responsible for bringing to the United States
those physically and mentally diseased, seems to be right, and
\ to have been of increasing effectiveness in late years. Inasmuch,
however, as the circumstances in different cases vary materially,
it seems desirable that the .penalty provided for evasion of the
law either through carelessness or connivance might also be varied
so that under certain circumstances as heavy a fine as $500
might be levied.
HOSPITAL INVESTIGATION
x^In order that a more careful test might be made of the physical
V conditions of the immigrants after their arrival in this country
the Immigration Commission had an accurate record1 kept of
all charity patients entering the Bellevue and Allied Hospitals
I in New York City, during the seven months from August i,
^ 1908, to February 28, 1909, these hospitals being the ones that
most frequently treat charity patients of the immigrant classes.
Records of 23,758 cases were taken, of whom 52.3 per cent were
foreign-born. When any race was represented by 200 or more
patients, the results were tabulated, so that some conclusions
might be reached regarding the liability to certain diseases of
the different classes of immigrants of the various races and na-
tionalities. |
1 Reports of Immigration Commission, Vol. I.
SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF RECENT IMMIGRATION 281
It is a rather striking fact that, so far as one can judge from\
these records kept, the races of the recent immigration, those /
from southern and eastern Europe, are not so subject to diseases C
that seem to be allied with moral weaknesses, as some of those {
of the older immigration races. For example, the largest per-
centage of diseases treated among Italians is 19.6 per cent for
traumatism, burns, etc., these apparently arising from the fact
that the newly arrived Italian immigrant is likely to be employed
in unskilled labor, where he meets with slight accidents. The
Hebrews also suffer most from this cause, a percentage of 13.1
per cent.
The Irish, who are also largely unskilled workmen, show only '
11.7 per cent of their cases coming from this cause, whereas
35.9 per cent of the Irish patients treated were suffering from
alcoholism, acute and chronic. Of the English 27.5 per cent,
and of the German 12.8 per cent, were treated for alcoholism,
and only 7.2 per cent and 12.4 per cent, respectively, for trauma-
tism, burns, etc. Of the Italians only 1.6 per cent were treated
for alcoholism and of the Hebrews only 0.9 of i per cent.
The Swedes with 1.5 per cent, Irish, Italians, Polish, and
Scotch each with 0.9 per cent, show a larger proportion treated
for syphilis than the English, Germans, Hebrews, or Magyars.
The English with 2.1 per cent and the Italians with 1.5 per cent
had a larger proportion treated for gonorrhea than any of the
other races of which a detailed study was made.
Among the native-born negroes only 3.6 per cent were treated
for alcoholism.
THE MENTALLY DEFECTIVE
It is much more difficult, in many instances, to detect the
mentally than the physically defective. Often there is nothing
to indicate to the medical inspector mental disease, unless the
immigrant can be kept under observation for a considerable
period of time, or unless the history of the case is known. Under
the law, "All idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics,
are excluded, insane persons, and persons who have been insane
within five years previous; and persons who have had two or
more attacks of insanity at any time previously." It is the
custom invariably to hold for observation any patient who shows
282
EFFECTS
any evidence whatever of mental disease ; but despite this care
not a few cases are found of those who have developed insanity
within a comparatively short period after landing. In some
instances this might have been anticipated if the history of the
patient had been known, but otherwise there was no means of
detection. The present law on this point seems to be satisfactory,
and its enforcement generally good under the very difficult
conditions; but it would be desirable to have a larger force of
experts to examine, and also, if it were practicable, to provide
some better means for securing the history of arriving immigrants.
NUMBER AND RATIO OF INSANE IN UNITED STATES AND IN FOREIGN
COUNTRIES x
INSANE IN H
OSPITALS
TOTAL 1
.NSANE
COUNTRY
YEAR
Number
No. per
100,000 of
Popula-
tion
Number
No. per
100,000 of
Popula-
tion
United States .
IQO3
I "\O I ^I
186 2
io6wi8<; 2
1 7O O ^
England and Wales . . . . .
Scotland . . .
1903
IQO2
113,964
16 658
340.1
^62 7
Ireland
TQO2
22 I?8
ouov
Canada
IQOI
12 8lO
2*86
i6«d.o?
•2Q7 O
France
1 004.
60 100
177 5
Germany
IQO3
1 08 004
191 6
Italy
I8OO
•24. 802
IO9 2
Austria ....
IOOI
14. 80?
C7 o
70 YA7
TI7 C
IQO2
2 7l6
O/'V
14. I
J^J)/it4
17 117
88 8
Netherlands
IQQ7
8 o<8
l67 £
Switzerland
IOOI
7 4.34.
224. 2
Norway ....
IOO2
I 8^3
80 c
S2.O7
2^8 4.
Sweden
IQOI
l^OO
e 08^
OU.^J
O7 3
8 OO*
I C4. O
Denmark
IOOI
-} AiQ.
4. IO7
171 3
The tables above, taken from the Special Report of the
United States Census, which some observations by the Immigra-
tion Commission in Bellevue and Allied Hospitals in New York
and reports of the Bureau of Immigration tend to confirm,
^Compiled from United States Census, Special Report,
minded in hospitals and institutions, 1904," pp. 9 and 10. j-
2 Figure for June i, 1890.
Insane and feeble-
SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF RECENT IMMIGRATION 283
throw some light on the relative tendencies of certain races
toward insanity, and show that certain aliens are more inclined
toward insanity than are native-born Americans.
RACIAL OR NATIONAL TENDENCIES
The high ratio of insanity prevailing among foreign-born""]
persons in the United States may be due, in a measure at least, L^
to racial or national tendencies.
Data showing the number of insane and the ratio of insanil
in the principal European countries and in Canada are afforded
by the Special Report of the Census Bureau. These data, together
with like data for the United States, obtained from the same
source, are presented in the table below.
FOREIGN-BORN WHITE INSANE ENUMERATED IN HOSPITALS IN CONTI-
NENTAL UNITED STATES, DECEMBER 31, 1903, COMPARED WITH THE TOTAL
FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION OF CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES IN 1900, BY
COUNTRY OF BIRTH ; PER CENT DISTRIBUTION *
COUNTRY OF BIRTH
FOREIGN-
BORN WHITE
INSANE
ENUMERATED
IN HOSPITALS
FOREIGN-
BORN
POPULA-
TION:
1900
Ireland
20. 0
i* 6
26.0
2<;.8
England and ^^ales .
7 O
o o
Canada 2
6.<?
II 4
ii. c
IO.7
Scotland . ....
I 7
2 3
Italy .
2.2
47
France
1.2
I.O
Hungary and Bohemia
2 2
2 O
Russia and Poland
4.4.
7 8
Other countries .
7 3
92
Total
IOO.O
IOO O
1 Compiled from United States Census, Special Report,
minded in hospitals and institutions, 1904," pp. 23 and 24.
2 Includes Newfoundland.
' Insane and feeble-
284 EFFECTS
PAUPERS
Although in the earlier days before strict regulation of immi-
gration had been provided by law many poor people came from
Europe, their home countries paying the expenses of their ship-
ment in order to rid themselves of the burden of their support,
our present regulations excluding those who are liable to become
a public charge have practically stopped the immigration of this
undesirable class. The Immigration Commission, with the
assistance of the Associated Charities in forty-three cities,
including practically all the large immigrant centers excepting
New York, reached the conclusion that only a very small per-
centage of the immigrants now arriving applied for relief.
In this statistical investigation,1 covering 31,374 cases actually
receiving assistance and reporting cause, it was found that 28.7
per cent had applied for assistance because of the death or dis-
ability of the breadwinner of the family ; 18.9 per cent on account
of the death or disability of another member of the family ; 59
per cent from lack of employment or insufficient earnings; 18.7
per cent on account of neglect or bad habits of the breadwinner ;
6.2 per cent on account of old age; and 10 per cent from other
causes.
It will be noted that because more than one reason was given
in some cases, this total amounts to more than 100 per cent,
but the relative proportions of the cases under the different classes
.are probably substantially accurate . If we attempt to discriminate
among the different races, it appears that it is among the immi-
grants of the earlier period or those coming from Northern Europe
that we find apparently the largest number of cases of neglect
or bad habits of the breadwinner. For example, among the South
Italians, only 8.7 per cent give this cause, whereas the Irish
give 20.9 per cent, the English 14 per cent, the German 15.7
per cent, the Norwegians 25.9 per cent. The Hebrews, again,
as representatives of the later immigrants, give 12.6 per cent,
L^ but the Lithuanians, by exception, give 25.6 per cent.
In the case of those giving lack of employment as the cause,
the highest percentage is found among the Syrians, 75.4 per
cent; the lowest among the French Canadians, 38.9 per cent
1 Reports of Immigration Commission, Vol. I.
SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF RECENT IMMIGRATION 285
There do not seem to be striking differences in this regard among
the other nationalities ; among the South Italians 67.8 per cent,
the Polish 65,9 per cent, the Irish 54.8 per cent, the English
63.3 per cent, the Germans 58.1 per cent ; the preponderance being
slightly greater among the late arrivals than among the early.
On the other hand, if we note the length of time that those
assisted have been in the United States, we find that 33.9 per
cent of those who have received aid have been here twenty years
or over, whereas only 6 per cent have been here two years ; and
if we take all who have been here under three years, it amounts
to only 10.3 per cent. Apparently, therefore, the newly arrived
immigrants do not soon apply for aid to any large extent. It
should be noted, also, that this investigation was made during
the six months of the winter of 1908-1909, while the effects of
the industrial depression of 1907-1908 were still felt. These last*
facts emphasize strongly the effectiveness of our present immi-
gration laws in excluding those likely to become a public charge,
as compared with the lack of care in ear Her years, when within
forty-eight hours of landing large numbers applied for relief.
CRIME
Probably no other question in connection with immigration
has aroused greater interest than its relation to crime. Probably
more hostility to the immigrant has been aroused by the asser-
tion that their incoming has increased crime in this country than
by any other fact ; and yet it is impossible to produce satisfactory
evidence that immigration has resulted in an increase of crime
out of proportion to the increase in the adult population. Al-
though available statistical material is too small to permit the
drawing of positive conclusions, such material as is available, / ^L
if trustworthy, would seem to indicate that immigrants are rather
less inclined toward criminality, on the whole, than are native
Americans, although these statistics do indicate that the children
of immigrants commit crime more often than the children of
natives.
Any special study of the relation of immigration to crime
should take into consideration not only the number of convictions
for crime but also the nature of the crimes committed and possibly
286 EFFECTS
the relative likelihood of the detection of crime in different locali-
ties or among different classes of the population.
DIFFICULTY OF ADMINISTRATION OF LAW
Although the immigration laws provide for the exclusion of
persons who have been convicted of, or confess to, an infamous
crime, there can be no doubt that many criminals have succeeded
and still succeed in evading this law.
It is, of course, impossible for an immigration inspector to tell
from the appearance of a man whether or not he has been a
criminal. In many cases criminals, especially those who have
committed certain classes of serious crimes, such as forgery or
even burglary, may be well-dressed, intelligent persons, traveling
in first cabin. Unless something is known of their previous
history, if they do not declare that they have been convicted of
crime, they will be admitted without question. Doubtless many
aliens enter the United States contrary to the law after having
been convicted of a crime, and having served out their sentence \
or, having been convicted of crime by foreign courts during
their absence from the place of trial, as is permitted in some
countries, if they have escaped arrest and fled the country.
Moreover, our laws do not exclude persons who have not been
convicted of crime although they may be looked upon as danger-
ous persons or probably criminals and on that account have
been placed by their home courts under police surveillance.
The Immigration Commission,1 in order to make as careful
a study as possible of this most important question within the
means at its disposal, took into careful account the material
collected by the United States Census on the extent of crime,
going through carefully the latest report regarding prisoners and
juvenile delinquents in institutions in 1904. In addition to this,
use was made of the records of the County and Supreme Courts
of New York State, from 1907 to 1908, of the New York City
Magistrates Courts, 1901-1908, and of the New York Court
of General Sessions, October i, 1908 to June 30, 1909, the ma-
terial in this last case having been especially collected by agents
of the Commission.
1 Reports of Immigration Commission, Vol. XXXVI.
SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF RECENT IMMIGRATION 287
Furthermore, the records of commitments to penal institution
in Massachusetts, October i, 1908, and September 30, 1909,
and data relating to alien prisoners in the penal institutions
throughout the United States, in 1908, were utilized, as well as
the police records made in Chicago in the years 1905-1908.
Many of these figures, of course, are not comparable one
with another, but by a careful study certain general conclusions
may be reached.
CLASSES OF CRIME
The tables of the distribution of classes of crime on pages 288
and 289, show that in all of the courts investigated, the proportion
of natives committing gainful offenses is decidedly larger than
that of foreigners, although in offenses of personal violence and
of those against public policy the foreigner predominates. It
should be borne in mind, however, that in the case of offenses
against public policy many are merely the violation of a city
ordinance, such as peddling without a city license, and it may
be that in certain of these cases the newly arrived immigrant
was not aware that he was committing an offense. Even, how-
ever, if he did know that he was violating an ordinance, it could
hardly be assumed that it was such a misdemeanor as would
imply a serious criminal tendency.
When on the other hand we take up the offense of personal
violence, we find that in the City Magistrate's Court of New
York and in the County and Supreme Courts of the same State,
the percentage of offenses of personal_viQ]ence is very much
higher among the Italians than among any other race or national-
ity. This seems a matter of special significance. For example,
of the convictions of Italians in the County and Supreme Courts
of New York State, 39.3 per cent were for offenses of personal
violence ; of the convictions of persons born in Austria-Hungary,
only 1 8. 6 per cent were for offenses of that class; for those
born in Ireland, only 16.5 per cent ; and for native-born citizens,
11.7 per cent. On the other hand, when in the same courts we
find that in the relative frequency of gainful offenses, the United ,
States leads with ^7.8 per cent, and the Italians have the fewest (
offenses with 37.6 per cent, we see the relative inclinations of
the different races brought out in a most striking way.
CJ
§
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SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF RECENT IMMIGRATION 289
DISTRIBUTION OF CLASSES OF CRIME1
Convictions: Number
COUNTRY OF BIRTH
TOTAL
GAINFUL
OFFENSES
OFFENSES
OF
PERSONAL
VIOLENCE
OFFENSES
AGAINST
PUBLIC
POLICY
OFFENSES
AGAINST
CHASTITY
UNCLASSI-
FIED
OFFENSES
United States . . .
Austria-Hungary . .
Canada
7,286
419
124.
5,665
280
85
855
78
16
509
31
14.
135
IO
i
122
20
8
England
Germany ....
Ireland
Italy
Poland
161
Si4
278
1,183
06
us
360.
197
445
61
13
67
46
465
17
17
54
24
244
j j
ii
13
3
13
2
5
20
8
16
Russia
646
498
84
35
12
17
Total foreign z .
Grand total . .
3,879
11,165
2,345
8,010
873
1,728
485
994
72
207
104
226
Convictions: Per cent distribution
COUNTRY OF BIRTH
TOTAL
GAINFUL
OFFENSES
OFFENSES
OF
PERSONAL
VIOLENCE
OFFENSES
AGAINST
PUBLIC
POLICY
OFFENSES
AGAINST
CHASTITY
UNCLASSI-
FIED
OFFENSES
United States . . .
Austria-Hungary . .
Canada
IOO.O
100.0
IOO.O
77-8
66.8
68. ?
ii. 7
18.6
12. 0
7.0
7-4
II. 7
1.9
2.4
0.8
1-7
4.8
6 <:
England
Germany ....
Ireland
IOO.O
IOO.O
IOO.O
71.4
70.0
7o.o
8.1
13.0
i6.<?
10.6
10.5
8.6
6.8
2-5
i.i
3-1
3-9
2 O
Italy ./....
Poland
IOO.O
IOO.O
37-6
6s 6
39-3
17 7
2O.6
II <?
i.i
2 I
1-4
31
Russia
IOO.O
77.1
I^.O
C.4
I.Q
2.6
Total foreign 2 .
Grand total . .
IOO.O
IOO.O
60.5
71.7
22.5
15-5
12.5
8.9
I.9
i-9
2.7
2.O
1 New York County and Supreme Courts, 1907-1908.
2 Includes "Other countries."
290 EFFECTS
Among these gainful offenses, however, there seems to be a
wide difference in kinds of crime. Of the convictions of persons
born in the United States, 29.9 per cent were for burglary. In
extortion, the Italians lead with 3.05 per cent; in forgery and
fraud, the Canadian with 4.03 per cent ; in larceny and receiving
stolen property, the Russian leads with 48.5, while in robbery,
the Poles are preeminent with 4.2 per cent.
If a similar analysis is made of the relative frequency of offenses
of personal violence, the Italians seem to show a peculiarly bad
eminence, leading in homicide with 6.3 per cent of all the con-
victions, while the nationality next to them is the Irish with
only 2.2 per cent. In abduction, the Italians also lead with
2.03 per cent, England being second at only 0.62 per cent. In
assault the Italians are first with 28.9 per cent, Austria-Hungary
second at 15 per cent. In all of the offenses of personal violence
the Italians lead, except in the case of rape, where the Germans
and Italians are equal at 2.1 per cent, citizens of the United
States following at 1.6 per cent. In the same court, the Italians
lead in crimes against the public health and safety with 13.8 per
cent, the Poles ranking second with 5.2 per cent. In the case of
violation of excise laws and similar offenses, the Canadian leads
with 10.5 per cent, the English following with only 6.2 per cent.
It is perhaps sufficient to say here that on the whole, in spite
of the inclination apparently shown by certain nationalities to
commit certain classes of crime, it is impossible to show whether
or not the totality of crime has been increased by immigration.
NEW MEASURES NEEDED
There can be no doubt regarding the inadequacy of our laws
for the exclusion of criminals. Many criminals doubtless come
as seamen, or as employees in some capacity on ships, and then
secure entrance to the country by desertion, while, as already
explained, many others escape because the inspecting officials
cannot detect them.
Unless an immigrant has a criminal record abroad, there
seems no way of ridding the country of his presence if he becomes
a criminal here. It seems advisable, that our laws be so amended
kthat an alien who becomes a criminal within a relatively short
SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF RECENT IMMIGRATION 291
time after his arrival, say from three to five years, should be
deported after he has paid the penalty here. Presumably such
a person has brought with him a tendency to commit crime.
Moreover, it would seem advisable for the United States to
make arrangements with certain foreign countries that keep
police records of all their citizens, so that all persons arriving
from those countries might be required to produce a penal
certificate showing a clear record. Those unable to present such
a record should be excluded. Such an arrangement could not
well be made with all countries, since, first, many countries keep
no such records, but also, second, because such an arrangement
would probably be used by some countries as an additional
means of oppressing political offenders or those suspected of
revolutionary inclinations, however praiseworthy such inclina-
tions might be from the American viewpoint.
The Immigration Commission and, also, at about the same
time, the Police Department of New York City, proved by
experiment in some hundreds of cases that it is possible to secure
in some foreign countries documentary evidence of the conviction
of crime of immigrants who have been admitted through error.
So far as is known, the Bureau of Immigration has never seriously
attempted such work, though it might well be a means of ridding
the country of scores, even hundreds, of dangerous criminals.
Moreover, if the Government were to keep abroad a confidential
force to watch for criminal and immoral persons intending to
enter this country, as it does provide such a force abroad to pre-
vent smuggling of goods, good results could doubtless be obtained.
A smuggled criminal or prostitute is far more injurious to the
country than a smuggled diamond or silk coat. Why not take
equal care regarding them ?
BIRTH RATE AMONG IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR
DESCENDANTS
So much has been said in late years about "race suicide,"
and so much of both the industrial and military strength of a
country depends upon the natural increase of population through
the birth rate, that the relative fecundity of immigrant women
as compared with that of both native-born of foreign parents
292 EFFECTS
and native-born of native parents is of great significance. For-
tunately enough, excellent material was collected by the Twelfth
Census, although not utilized by the Census Bureau, so that the
• Immigration Commission was able from the original data thus
collected to reach accurate results of value. It was not considered
; practicable to make use of the material for all sections of the
/ United States, but the State of Rhode Island, the city of Cleve-
land and forty-eight counties (largely rural) in the State of Ohio,
the city of Minneapolis and twenty-one rural counties in Minne-
sota, were taken as typical of the different sections of the country
and of urban and rural conditions. The detailed figures are of
great interest.1
WOMEN BEARING NO CHILDREN
Some general conclusions may be reached as follows : The
percentage of women under forty-five years of age who had
been married from ten to nineteen years, when classified by
parentage and nativity shows that in all these regions selected
for study 7.4 per cent bore no children. Among the native
whites of native parentage this fact held of 13.1 per cent, while
among the whites of foreign parentage of only 5.7 per cent.
Among the women of foreign parentage the percentage of women
bearing no children was largest among the Scotch — 8.9 per cent
of the first generation and 11.3 per cent of the second generation.
The Polish women were the most fertile; of the women of
the first generation only 2.6 per cent bore no children, and of
those of the second only 1.5 per cent. The Bohemians, Russians,
and Norwegians show likewise relatively few women without
children, while the English, French, Irish, and English Canadian
rank next to the Scotch in the large numbers unfruitful. Speak-
ing generally, also, it may be noted that the percentage of child-
less women is decidedly higher in the second generation of the
white women of foreign parentage, although this difference does
not appear in so marked a degree in rural Minnesota as in the
other areas. Generally speaking, the result would seem to indi-
cate that the second generation, under rural conditions, is almost
as likely to have children as the first. Under urban conditions
this is not so likely to occur, as percentages indicate.
1 Reports of Immigration Commission, Vol. XXVIII.
SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF RECENT IMMIGRATION 293
AVERAGE NUMBER OF CHILDREN
Considering the question from another viewpoint, that of the »
average number of children borne by women of the different races
and nationalities in these different localities, — among the women
of American stock, the average number of children in Cleveland,
Minneapolis, and Rhode Island, which are largely urban, is much
the same, 2.4 and 2.5, while in the rural districts of both Ohio and
Minnesota, the number of children is practically one more, 3.4.
Among the women of foreign stock, the difference between
city and country is not so decidedly marked, but there is also
decided variation among the different races. The average num-
ber of children borne by women under forty-five years of age,
married from ten to nineteen years, was 2.7 for native white
women of native parentage, and 4.4 for the native white women
of foreign parentage. Among those races studied, the highest
birth rate was found among the Eole§ — 6.2 children for the
women of the first generation and 5.1 for those of the second.
Next to these rank the French Canadians with 5.8 for the first
generation and 4.9 for the seconl37~Among the foreigners the low-
est birth rate was found among the English, with 3.7 for the first
generation and 2.9 for the second. The Scotch ranked almost
the same with 3.8 in the first generation and 2.9 in the second.
In practically all of these cases the number of children is
larger in rural districts and smaller in the cities, although in the
case of Poles in Ohio 6.1 was the rate in Cleveland to 5.6 in rural
Ohio. The exception does not appear significant.
RELATION OF YEARS OF MARRIED LIFE TO BIRTH RATE,
BY RACES
Still another indication of the same tendency of the native"
Americans and the second generation of immigrants to have
fewer children is shown by the average number of years married
for each child born to the women enumerated. As is to be ex-
pected from what has preceded, the smallest average number of
years is found among the Poles with 2.3 for the first generation
and 2.6 for the second. The largest number of years is found
among the English with 3.9 of the first generation and 5 of the
second generation. The English Canadian, the Scotch, and the
294 EFFECTS
French all rank high, while the Italians, French Canadians, and
Norwegians rank low.
The general results seem to indicate that fecundity is much
greater among women of foreign parentage than among the
; American women of native parentage and usually greater among
the immigrants than among their descendants. Generally speak-
ing, also, the fecundity is greater in the rural districts than in the
cities. Taking all the totals together, the fecundity seems great-
est in the first generation of Polish women, wEo bore in the
years indicated one child every 2.3 years, while it is least in the
second generation of English women, who bore on the average
one child only every five years.
THE SOCIAL EVIL AND THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC
In many respects the most pitiful as well as the most revolting
phase of the immigration question is that connected with the
social evil or the white slave traffic.
From the nature of the cases, it is, of course, impossible to
get detailed statistics regarding the question.1 From the figures
collected in an investigation of four months in the New York
City Night Court, November 15, 1908, to March. 15, 1909, it
appears that 27.7 per cent of the women arrested and convicted
for keeping disorderly houses and solicitation, were foreign-
born. Of these foreign-born cases in the Night Court, 581 in
all, the Hebrews furnished the largest number, 225, the French
next with 154, followed by the Germans with 69. In cases of
exclusion and deportation the figures are materially different.
A very large proportion of the girls who come to our cities to
engage in this business are from the country districts and are
American-born, although very often they are immigrant girls
who have entered factories of various types or have been engaged
in such lines of activity that they are kept from the benefits of
home influence.
ECONOMIC CAUSES
In very many other cases, however, an important indirect
cause of their downfall seems to be economic, although dependent,
largely, upon the other conditions surrounding their home life.
1 Reports of Immigration Commission, Vol. XXXVH.
SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF RECENT IMMIGRATION 295
In the very crowded districts of the great cities the conditions
of living are such that the normal instincts of modesty and
propriety are, in many cases, almost inevitably deadened, with
the result that yielding to temptation is much easier and more
frequent than would otherwise be the case. Low wages are in
themselves scarcely ever a direct cause.
The investigations of the Immigration Commission seem
to show very clearly that the keepers of disorderly houses and
those most actively engaged in the work of procuring inmates
for these houses, either in this country or abroad, are either aliens
or the children of aliens.
All such figures, however, are likely to be misleading. The
opinions of the agents of the Commission, of the police, and of
others familiar with the situation, lead one to the conclusion that
the largest proportion of prostitutes entering the country are
French ; the Hebrews seem rather to have engaged in the life
after entering the country. The Hebrews seem, on the other
hand, to be more active as procurers and pimps in seducing the
young girls here and persuading them to enter the life.
The report of the Commission of Immigration for 1914 gives
the total number of nationalities debarred for prostitution as
follows : English, 57 ; French, 32 ; German, 37 ; Hebrew, 27 ;
Mexicans, 107. Those debarred as procurers : English, 37 ;
French, 14; Germans, 31; Hebrews, 6; Mexicans, 65. These
figures bring into evil prominence the Mexicans and English.
Deportation after admission shows like results.1
RACES
Of the women who are thus imported for immoral purposes,
either willingly or against their will, certain nationalities seem to
be especially prominent. The numbers of some of the different
races convicted in the night court have been given on page
289 ; but these convictions are, of course, no certain measure of
the numbers or proportions of those imported.
MOTIVES
The motive of business profit has given the impulse which
creates and upholds this traffic, whether carried on in this country
1 Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration, p. 105.
296 EFFECTS
or whether the women are imported. The persons actively en-
gaged in enticing women into the business have only profit in view.
METHODS OF ENTRY AND EXPLOITATION
In securing entry into this country contrary to law, these
women are generally brought in as wives or relatives of the
importers. It is usually very difficult, if not impossible, to
detect these cases ; and after admission it is likewise extremely
difficult to secure such evidence as to justify deportation.
The system of exploitation on the part of the procurers and
other persons engaged in the traffic is extremely brutal and
revolting, resulting almost invariably in absolute poverty and
dependence on the part of the victim and usually within a com-
paratively short time in disease and an early death.
RESULTS OF TRAFFIC
*• It is, of course, impossible to discuss in detail the evil results
of this traffic in immigrants. Suffice it to say that it has materially
heightened the gross evils of prostitution. Unnatural practices
are brought largely from continental Europe ; the fiendish work
of the procurers and pimps is largely done by aliens or immi-
grants ; diseases are spread more widely among guilty and inno-
cent; even the ancient vice of the use of men and boys for
""immoral purposes is coming from abroad.
Fortunately, the investigation of the Commission aroused the
public to action. Their repoft has been followed by others made
by private Commissions, especially in Chicago, Minneapolis,
and New York. The governments and courts seem now to be
doing really effective work.
LEGISLATION AND ADMINISTRATION
Under the recommendation of the Commission new laws have
been passed by Congress, and in a number of our States much
more stringent laws have been passed since the report of the
Immigration Commission, so that at the present time, with a
reasonable degree of effort on the part of well-meaning citizens
and reasonable diligence on the part of the police officials and of
the courts, the worst evils of the traffic may be, and in many
SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF RECENT IMMIGRATION 297
instances have already been, decidedly checked and the worst
criminals have in many instances been convicted. The remedy
in this, as in most such matters, is to maintain a sufficient degree
of intelligent knowledge on the part of the thoughtful normal
citizen, and a willingness to deal with such a revolting subject
with frankness, intelligence, conservatism and firmness, unmixed
with fanaticism and prejudice.
IMPORTANCE ATTACHED TO THE SOCIAL EFFECTS OF
IMMIGRATION
In most of the discussions on immigration that have appeared ~
during the last few years, whether the immigrant came from
Europe or from Asia, great importance has been attached to
the social effects of immigration arising from the personal quali-
ties of the immigrants. Many have feared that the physical
standards of the population of the United States would be lowered/
by the incoming of diseased persons ; that the arrival of immi-|
grants and paupers would prove not merely a financial burden
but also a menace to the morals of the community; while the
late discussions over the white slave traffic and other forms of
vice have served still more strongly to accentuate this belief
in the social evils arising from immigration.
The late investigations of the Immigration Commission show
that, vital as the social effects are, relatively speaking, undue
significance has been attached during the past few years to these
social effects as a motive for legislation. While there are still
many improvements to be made in our immigration laws and
in their administration, nevertheless at the present time there
is no serious danger to be apprehended immediately from the
social defects of the immigrants, as has already been shown in
this chapter. The number of persons afflicted with contagious I
diseases or insanity, or the number of paupers or criminals arriv-
ing, taking them as individuals, is very large, but taken as a
percentage of the entire number coming is so small that too much
heed need not be paid to it. Of course, this does not mean th
we ought not to make every effort possible to lessen still further
these evils. Every effort possible should be made, and special
emphasis should be placed upon caring for the immigrants after
their arrival, in order to bring them as soon as possible into
298 EFFECTS
harmony with our best institutions. But these evils should not
blind our eyes to those of more far-reaching import.
The chief danger of immigration lies, not in this direction.
but in the field of industry. When immigrants who are unskilled
laborers arrive in so large numbers that the tendency is for them
to lower the average rate of wages and the standard of living
among the wage earners, the danger is one much more far-reach-
ing, and one to which our statesmen should give earnest atten-
tion. This includes indirectly often social effects as well. A
number of later chapters will serve to show how imminent this
industrial danger is, in what form it appears, and the way in
which it should be met. This, rather than the immediate social
evils, is the most difficult phase of the immigration problem,
and at the moment it is the most important phase. It is this
that calls for prompt legislation.
SOCIAL: IMMIGRATION AND HEALTH1
ALFRED C. REED, M.D., UNITED STATES PUBLIC HEALTH AND
MARINE HOSPITAL SERVICE
T)ERHAPS no question is of more paramount and continuing
-L interest to the American people than immigration in all
its phases and relations to public welfare. The history of the
United States is the history of alien immigration. The earliest
pioneers were themselves alien immigrants. Our institutions,
political, religious, and social, have been founded and supported
by aliens or their near descendants. Our country is indeed a
melting pot, into which have been poured diverse varieties of
peoples, from all nations and races. Yet in the face of this,
these variant elements have been fused into a more or less homo-
geneous nation. A national life and character we have. This
national or American character is not exemplified in those places
where the large streams of immigration are pouring in, but farther
away where the waters have mixed. Such a condition, unique
in the history of nations, is responsible for certain problems
which are also unique in history, and consequently do not admit
of solution according to precedents.
The first rule of national life is self-preservation, and since
immigration has had and still has so important a role in American
national life, it must be carefully scrutinized to determine which
immigrants are desirable, and vice versa, from the standpoint of
the betterment and continuance of the American nation. The
choice between free immigration, restricted immigration, and
absolute exclusion is increasingly difficult to make, and does not
enter our field of inquiry, except to recall a principle which is as
valid from the medical standpoint as from the economic or social.
Only those peoples should be admitted whom experience has
shown will amalgamate quickly and become genuine citizens.
The period of residence necessary for citizenship should be raised
1 From The Popular Science Monthly, April, 1912.
299
3oo
EFFECTS
from three to five years, during which time the immigrant should
be literally on probation, and subject to deportation if found
wanting, or if unable to meet the qualifications of citizenship
at the end of that time. The government should decide where
the immigrant may settle and the immigration current should
be directed to the Western and farming districts, and not allowed
to stagnate in Eastern cities.
The great mass of popular literature on the subject of immi-
gration is singularly deficient in discussion and analysis of its
medical features. It is true, the United States government be-
stows on public health and preventive medicine nowhere near
the attention it finds necessary for the prevention of disease in
stock and for agricultural improvement, but none the less there
are certain well-organized and efficiently operated agencies
which have for their function the improvement of public hygiene
and sanitation, the eradication of preventable disease, and the
study of causation and methods of control of diseases. Most of
these functions are exercised by the Public Health and Marine
Hospital Service, which, strangely enough, constitutes a bureau
under the Treasury Department. Some of this work is done
under the Department of Agriculture, and other minor lines
are scattered elsewhere through the national machinery. It is
easily seen how much more efficient would be the work were all
these agencies for national health protection united under one
administrative head, and their various activities carefully coordi-
nated.
The Public Health and Marine Hospital Service operates all
national quarantine stations where inspection is made for yellow
fever, typhus fever, smallpox, bubonic plague, leprosy, and chol-
era; maintains hospitals throughout the country for sailors of
the American merchant marine ; conducts the Hygienic Labora-
tory at Washington for the study of the causation and treatment
of diseases; exercises numerous minor functions of a national
board of health ; and conducts the medical inspection of immi-
grants. Certain diseases are found so frequently among immi-
grants, and others are so inherently dangerous, as to merit special
mention because of their important relation to public health.
j First among these might be placed trachoma, a disease of the
I eyelids characterized by extreme resistance to treatment, very
SOCIAL: IMMIGRATION AND HEALTH 301
chronic course, and most serious results. Most of the immigrant
cases occur in Russians, Austrians, and Italians, although it is
of common occurrence in oriental and Mediterranean countries.
It causes a large percentage of the blindness in Syria and Egypt.
Its contagious nature, together with the resulting scarring of the
lids and blindness, make its recognition imperative. The hook-
worm (Uncinaria) has received much attention lately since it
has been found so widely distributed through the mountains
of the South, the mines of California, the middle West, etc. It
is a minute parasitic intestinal worm about tjiree fifths of an inch
long, and under the microscope shows relatively enormous and
powerful chitinous jaws by means of which it attaches itself to
the intestinal walls. The saliva of the hookworm has the curious
property of preventing coagulation of blood like leech extract,
and when it is remembered that the worms may vary in number
from several hundred to a thousand or more, and that each worm
moves frequently from place to place on the intestinal wall,
it is apparent how excessive and continuous is the drain on the
blood and lymph juices. The result is an extreme anemia which
brings in its wake a varied multitude of bodily ills, and may
eventuate fatally, meanwhile having incapacitated the victim
for mental or physical work. Infection can spread rapidly from
a single case. Not many hookworm carriers have been discovered
among immigrants, probably because the facilities for their
detection are so meager. But the heavy immigration from coun-
tries where uncinaria is abundant, a%well as the recent suggestive
work of Dr. H. M. Manning at the Ellis Island Immigrant
Hospital, indicates that there is a constant stream of fresh infec-
tion pouring in. Indisputably routine examination for hook-
worms should be instituted. The same can be said of other
intestinal parasites as tapeworms, pinworms, whipworms, eel-
worms and others. One of the tapeworms, the so-called fish
worm (Dibothriocephalus latus) , leads to an anemia fully as severe
as that from the hookworm.
Many other diseases might be mentioned, but these are suffi-
cient to illustrate the importance of careful medical inspection
of immigrants.
The total immigration into the United States through all ports
of entry for the year ending June 30, 1911, was 1,052,649. Of
302 EFFECTS
these 22,349 were debarred for various reasons, leaving a net
increase of 1,030,300. The chief port of entry is, of course, New
York, where 749,642 aliens were examined. Next in order of
importance came Boston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, and at
a greater distance Galveston, Tampa, San Francisco, Honolulu.
Miami, and Portland, Maine. As the laws are uniform and the
methods of inspection the same at all ports, consideration of
methods and results at Ellis Island, New York, will give a clear
idea of the entire subject.
The medical inspecting service at Ellis Island is divided into
three branches, the hospital, the boarding division, and the line,
The hospital division presents an excellently equipped and man-
aged institution, and an isolated set of buildings for contagious
diseases. The hospital service is limited exclusively to immi-
grants, and the patients are those acutely ill upon arrival, those
taken sick during their stay on the island, and cases of. acute
sickness among aliens already landed who for some reason have
been brought to the island for deportation.
The boarding division of the medical inspection on Ellis Island
has for its particular function the inspection of aliens in the first
and second cabins on board the incoming vessels. Those who
require more detailed examination are sent to Ellis Island.
The routine inspection on the line is that part which the visitor
sees, and is the most important feature of the medical sieve
spread to sift out the physically and mentally defective. The
incoming immigrants pass in single file down two lines. Each
of these lines makes a right-angled turn midway in its course.
At this turn stands a medical officer. He sees each person directly
from the front as he approaches, and his glance travels rapidly
from feet to head. In this rapid glance he notes the gait, attitude,
presence of flat feet, lameness, stiffness at ankle, knee, or hip,
malformations of the body, observes the neck for goitre, mus-
cular development, scars, enlarged glands, texture of skin, and
finally as the immigrant comes up face to face, the examiner
notes abnormalities of the features, eruptions, scars, paralysis,
expression, etc. As the immigrant turns, in following the line,
the examiner has a side view, noting the ears, scalp, side of neck,
examining the hands for deformity or paralysis, and if anything
about the individual seems suspicious, he is asked several
SOCIAL: IMMIGRATION AND HEALTH 303
questions. It is surprising how often a mental aberration will
show itself in the reaction of the person to an unexpected question.
As the immigrant passes on, the examiner has a rear view which
may reveal spinal deformity or lameness. In case any positive
or suspicious evidence of defect is observed, the immigrant re-
ceives a chalk mark indicating the nature of the suspicious
circumstance.
At the end of each line stands a second medical officer who does
nothing but inspect eyes. He everts the eyelids of every person
passing the line, looking for signs of trachoma, and also notes
the presence of cataract, blindness, defective vision, acute condi-
tions requiring hospital care, and any other abnormalities. All
cases which have been marked on the line are separated from the
others and sent to the medical examining rooms for careful
examination and diagnosis. When it is remembered that often
5000 immigrants pass in a day, it is clear that the medical
officers not only are kept busy, but that they see an unusually
wide variety of cases.
After careful examination, the nature of the defect or disease
found is put in the form of a medical certificate which must
be signed by at least three of the physicians on duty. It is not
within the province of the medical officers to pass judgment on
the eligibility of the immigrant for admission. The medical
certificate merely states the diagnosis, leaving to the immigra-
tion inspector in the registry division the duty of deciding the
question of admission. In the inspector's consideration are
included not alone the medical report, but all other data con-
cerning the applicant, such as age, money in his possession, previ-
ous record, liability to become a public charge, and his sponsors.
Most cases of trachoma and mental or organic nervous disease
are sent to the hospital and kept under care and observation
to facilitate an accurate diagnosis. Seldom indeed does the alien
suffer from too harsh a medical judgment. He is given the
benefit of a doubt always. For example, if a case of defective
vision is found to be 3/20 normal, it would be certified as perhaps
5/20 normal.
The immigration law as it stands since the legislation of 1907^
divides all defective immigrants into the following classes : Class \
A, aliens whose exclusion is mandatory because of a definite and j
304 EFFECTS
specified defect or disease. Class B, aliens not under Class A,
/but who possess some defect or disease which is likely to inter-
fere with the ability to earn a living. Class C, aliens who present
a defect or disease of still lesser seriousness, not affecting ability
to earn a living, but which none the less must be certified for
the information of the immigration inspectors.
Under Class A, the excluded, are listed idiots, imbeciles, the
feeble-minded; the epileptics, the insane, persons afflicted with
tuberculosis of the respiratory, intestinal, or genito-urinary tracts,
and loathsome or dangerous contagious diseases. By contagious
the law means communicable. Loathsome contagious diseases
include those whose presence excites abhorrence in others, and
which are essentially chronic, such as favus, ringworm of the
scalp, parasitic fungus diseases, Madura foot, leprosy, and venereal
disease. Dangerous contagious diseases are such as trachoma,
filariasis, hookworm infection, amoebic dysentery, and endemic
hematuria.
Under Class B, diseases and defects not in Class A but which
affect ability to earn a living, are such conditions as hernia, or-
ganic heart disease, permanently defective nutrition and muscular
or skeletal development, many deformities, varicosities of the
lower extremities, premature senescence and arterial degenera-
tion, certain nervous diseases, chronic joint inflammations, poor
vision, and tuberculosis of the bones, skin, or glands. The immi-
gration law makes no distinction between cabin and steerage
aliens, and the medical officer has no duty beyond the purely
medical inspection.
Commissioner of Immigration Williams for the Port of New
York in his recent report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1911,
makes some pertinent observations and recommendations regard-
ing the medical phases of the immigration question at Ellis Island.
He finds that the present medical quarters are not large enough
for the proper execution of the laws relating to physical and men-
tal defectives. Expansion to an appropriate size is prevented
by the failure of Congress to appropriate the funds requested.
He notes the large number of feeble-minded children in the schools
of New York City who have passed Ellis Island, and gives as
one reason, lack of time and facilities for thorough examination
as to mental condition. The result is that the law in this
SOCIAL: IMMIGRATION AND HEALTH 305
particular is practically a dead letter. According to the law,
the feeble-minded as well as idiots and imbeciles are absolutely
excluded. It is of vast import that the feeble-minded be detected,
not alone because they are predisposed to become public charges,
but because they and their offspring contribute so largely to
the criminal element. All grades of moral, physical, and social
degeneracy appear in their descendants, and it is apparent
how grave is the social and economic problem involved. The
steamship companies do not exercise proper precautions in receiv-
ing immigrants for passage, and this makes all the more necessary
a rigid inspection at the port of entry into this country.
The report of the Chief Medical Officer on Ellis Island, Dr.
G. W. S toner, shows that during the year ending June 30, 1911,
nearly 17,000 aliens were certified for physical or mental defect
and over 5000 of these were deported (not necessarily for medical
reasons alone) . Among those certified were 209 mental defectives,
of whom 45 per cent were feeble-minded, and 33 per cent in-
sane. Under loathsome and dangerous contagious diseases there
were 1361 cases, of which 85 per cent were trachoma. Over
11,000 aliens had a defect or diseases affecting ability to earn a
living and half of these were due to age and the changes incident
to senescence. More than 4000 certificates were rendered for
conditions not affecting ability to earn a living.
Over 6000 aliens were treated in the immigrant hospital,
beside 720 cases of contagious disease, which were transferred to
the State Quarantine Hospital at the harbor entrance before the
completion of the present contagious-disease hospital on Ellis
Island. Among these 700 there were a hundred deaths, chiefly
from measles, scarlet fever, and meningitis. The medical officers
also examined 168 cases which had become public charges in
surrounding towns of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut,
to determine the nature of the illness and if due to causes existing
prior to landing. Chief among the contagious diseases were
measles, chicken pox, diphtheria, and scarlet fever. The quaran-
tinable diseases, cholera, leprosy, bubonic plague, smallpox,
typhus and yellow fever, are removed at the New York Quaran-
tine Station before the vessels are docked.
Statistics such as these inevitably suggest a brief considera- j
tion of the different sources of immigration and their relative I
3o6 EFFECTS
desirability from the medical standpoint. In general it may be
said that the best class is drawn from northern and western
Europe, and the poorest from the Mediterranean countries and
western Asia. Among the worst are the Greeks, South Italians,
and the Syrians, who emigrate in large numbers. The Greeks
offer a sad contrast to their ancient progenitors, as poor physical
development is the rule among those who reach Ellis Island, and
they have above their share of other defects.
The old question of the desirability of the Hebrew must be
settled on other grounds than those of physical fitness alone,
although even here the medical evidence is decidedly against
him, as Dr. McLaughlin has shown that the proportion of defec-
tives to total landed is greatest among the Syrians, i in 29,
and next greatest among Hebrews, i in 42. Contrary to popular
belief, the Jewish race is far from a pure stock, and has been
colored by various and repeated admixtures with other bloods.
Hence Jews of different nationalities differ considerably in their
physical status and aptitude for American institutions, and for
amalgamation with our body politic. Nojrace is desirable which
does not tend to lose its distinctive traits in the process of blend-
ing with our own social body. It would seem from history that
the Jew only blends inadvertently and against his conscious
endeavor and desire. Hence the process of true assimilation must
be very backward. Moreover, in origin, racial traits, instincts
and point of view, the Hebrew race is essentially oriental, and
altogether there is at least ground for objection to unrestricted
Jewish immigration.
No one can mistake the pressing necessity for a solution of
the immigration problem. The problem of New York City in
this respect is unique and differs from that of the rest of the coun-
try, because, as Walter Laidlaw points out, New York City is
in reality a foreign city, inasmuch as in 1910 the native-born of
native parents numbered only 193 in every 1000 inhabitants.
This preponderating foreign element is due to the concentration
of arrested immigration in New York. For the country as a
whole, great interest attaches to the influence which the Panama
Canal will exert in diverting immigration lines to southern and
- Pacific coast points. New local problems will of course arise,
SOCIAL: IMMIGRATION AND HEALTH 307
but the basic proposition remains always the same. Immigration I
should be restricted absolutely to such races as will amalgamate, /
without lowering the standard of our own national life.
In general, immigrants from the Mediterranean countries
should be excluded, especially those from Greece, South Italy,
and Syria, as well as most Hebrews, Magyars, Armenians, and
Turks. Strict enforcement of the present medical laws will
automatically exclude these races to a sufficient extent, admitting
the few who are fit. This, combined with a strictly enforced
five-year probation period, with deportation as the penalty
for any criminal conviction or for failure to qualify for citizen-
ship afterward, would go far toward relieving the situation. This
need not disqualify aliens from travel in the United States.
The immigrant per se has no moral or social right to enter""
this country against the will of its citizens. An enduring common-
wealth must of necessity guard rigidly the health of its citizens
and protect itself against undesirable additions from without.
There was a time when European immigration was free, and
almost entirely of desirable classes. That time has passed. The
less desirable classes are increasing actually and relatively, and
at the expense of the more desirable. It can truthfully be said
that the dregs and off-scourings of foreign lands, the undesir-
ables of whom their "own nations are- only too eager to purge
themselves, come in hosts to our shores. The policy of those
advocating free immigration would make this country in effect
the dumping ground of the world.
Exclusion of these undesirables works no injustice to the
lands from which they come. A large emigration from a land
usually is followed by an increased birth rate, and the net change
is slightly affected, if at all. Admitting undesirables to this coun-
try will in no wise elevate the world's human standard, because
those undesirables will multiply as fast here as in their original
home, and their stock will only become extinct when it ceases
to perpetuate itself. High requirements for admission to this
country reflexly raise standards of living and education in those
lands from which our immigrants are drawn. This was illustrated
in Italy a few years ago when the higher requirements for admis-
sion caused an enforcement of the primary education laws which
3o8 EFFECTS
were dead letters before. Again, increase of a poorer class of
immigration decreases the number of the better class and also
decreases the chances of those who do come.
The medical phases of immigration blend very quickly into
the subjects of national health protection, national^eugenics^
and even the future existence of the ideals and standard of life
which we are proud to call American. Conservatism and a
carefully maintained medium between absolute exclusion and
free immigration certainly seems the best policy.
IMMIGRATION AND CRIME1
ISAAC A. HOURWICH, PH.D., FORMERLY OF UNITED STATES CENSUS
BUREAU
r I ^HE alarming increase of the number of alien criminals " has
-L come to be the favorite topic for newspaper editorials when-
ever a sensational crime is committed in the foreign section of
some of our large cities. More recently the official statistician has
fallen in line witji the popular sentiment. The Commissioner-
General of Immigration, in his reports for the years 1908 and
1909, dwells upon the increase of the number of aliens in penal
institutions from 1904 to 1908. The superintendent of the state
prisons of the state of New York, in his report for the year 1909,
emphasizing "the recent remarkable increase in prison popula-
tion," gives expression to the view "that the crowded condition
of our prisons is largely due to the influx of immigrants during
the last few years."
" A large proportion of the vicious and ignorant . . . make the
large cities their headquarters. Thus there is forced upon New
York state and upon its charitable and penal institutions more
than their due proportion of the undesirable classes of immigrants,
the lawless, the illiterate, and the defective." As a remedy, he
recommends "the exclusion of this undesirable class of immi-
grants."
Yet the very fact of this sudden increase of the rate of delin-
quency and dependency within so short a period would suggest to
an unbiased student of social phenomena the working of some
extraordinary cause. If it be remembered that the later statistics
for the United States relate to the year 1908, which was a year of
industrial depression, the explanation of this sudden increase
of crime, insanity, and pauperism among aliens will become
obvious.
Conceding, for the sake of argument, the contention of the
superintendent of New York state prisons that the state of New
1 From The American Journal of Sociology, January, 1912.
309
3io
EFFECTS
York bears more than its proportionate share of the burden of
crime, it is instructive to compare the average daily population
of the three state prisons for each of the last ten years.
TABLE I. DAILY AVERAGE PRISON POPULATION
YEAR
NUMBERS OF PRISONERS
PER CENT INCREASE (+) OR
DECREASE (— ), SINCE 1900
•2 ,776
•} 384
I QO2
3*233
— 4
3-21 7
— 2
IQO4
3.4CX
-f i
TOO?
•2 4.64.
4- 1
IOo6
2 ,472
+ 1
IOO7
•2 4^6
+ 2
IQO8
12,817
+13
IQOO
A A.2O
+ 11
We note that between the years 1900 and 1907 the average
daily prison population fluctuated but very slightly from year to
year, falling at times 4 per cent below or rising 3 per cent above
the starting-point. According to the state census of 1905, the
population of the state increased from 1900 to 1905 by n per
I cent; a large share of that increase was due to immigration;
Lihus relatively to the population, crime was decreasing. The
"years 1908 and 1909, however, show a sudden increase of the
prison population ; those were precisely the years when emigra-
tion of aliens from the United States assumed unprecedented
proportions. From the month of December, 1907, to the month
of August, 1908, emigration from the United States exceeded
immigration by 124,124 persons, while from June 3, 1900, to
June 30, 1907, the net addition through immigration to the popu-
lation of the United States was 4,500,000 persons of whom the
i state of New York received a proportionate share. In other
I words, the wave of criminality coincided with the lowest ebb of
\immigration, while the high tide of immigration was contemporaneous
\with a decrease of crime.
This conclusion is fully borne out by the annual statistics of
crime in the state of New York for the period commencing 1830.
Two features stand out conspicuously: first, that taking the
IMMIGRATION AND CRIME
three quarters of a century covered as a whole, the increase of
crime merely keeps pace with the growth of population ; second,
that annual figures are subject to very sharp fluctuations. Any
comparison between two years chosen at random must necessarily
be fallacious. For example, if the years 1878 and 1894 were
chosen for comparison, one might reach the conclusion that the
number of convictions showed a very encouraging decrease of
crime. As that period witnessed the beginning and rapid growth
of immigration from Russia, it might be further argued that the
decrease of crime in the state of New York was due to the moral
influence of Russian immigrants upon the people of the state of
New York. This inference would be precisely on a par with the
conclusions drawn by the Immigration Restriction League from
a comparison of the prosperous year 1904 with the year 1908,
a year of industrial depression. A scientific study of the effects
of immigration upon criminality must cover a long period, em-
bracing years of prosperity and industrial depression, so that
all casual, transitory, and temporary influences may as far as
possible be eliminated.
Do the statistics of crime in the state of New York justify the
fears of the alarmist? Table II shows the relative number of
convictions for every 100,000 population at each census from
1830 to 1905 :
TABLE II. NUMBER OF CONVICTIONS IN COURTS OF RECORD AND THE
POPULATION OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, 1830-1905
CENSUS YEAR
CONVICTIONS
POPULATION
THOUSANDS
CONVICTIONS PER
100,000 POPULATION
1830
I O^O
I OIO
r t
1840
I 34.3
2 4.2Q
*6
18^0
I <ZX2
3 o87
<o
1860 ....
i 601
3 881
4.1
1870
2 I Cl
A 2,83
4.O
1880 . .
2 SAY
C 083
c6
1800
-3 264.
5QO8
*6
IQOO
7 260
e»7
IQ<X
A QA2
8067
61
kit appears from this table that the relative rate of criminality
Q 1890 was the same as in 1840, notwithstanding the change in
3I2
EFFECTS
the racial composition of the population of the state. In the
year 1900 there was just one more conviction for every 100,000
of the population than in 1890, and in 1905 four convictions per
100,000 population in excess of 1900. Certainly, there is no
occasion to go into hysterics.
Still, as stated before, the number of convictions for a single
year may be exceptionally high or low, and a comparison compris-
ing even a number of single years may accordingly be misleading.
In order to eliminate the effect of annual fluctuations of the num-
ber of convictions, the average annual number of convictions for
each period between two census years is compared in Table III
with the average annual increase of the population of the state
of New York, for the same periods.
TABLE III. ANNUAL AVERAGE NUMBER OF CONVICTIONS COMPARED WITH
ANNUAL AVERAGE INCREASE OF POPULATION FROM CENSUS TO CENSUS,
1831-1905
NUMBER OF
CONVICTIONS
ANNUAL AVERAGE
PERIODS
Annual Average
Percentage Increase
( + ), or Decrease (-)
INCREASE OF POPU-
LATION, PER I,OCO
1831-1840
I O^7
1841—1850
I J.7A
1851-1860 •
I 734.
\6y-o
+ 17 7
•*/•;)
2 r •?
1861-1870
+ 28 I
1871-1880
31 r 2
l^.U
1881-1890
2 QOO
— 80
18 o
1891-1900
1901-1905
3,734
4roi
+ 28.8
+ 20 8
21.2
22 O
It is worthy of note that in 1861-1870 the number of convictions
was increasing faster than during the preceding decade 1851-
1860, while the growth of population was slowing down. On the
contrary, a comparison of the decades 1881-1890 and 1871-1880
shows that the number of convictions fell off, while the popula-
tion was increasing faster; the same tendency was manifest
during .the period 1901-1905, as compared with 1891-1900.
This would seem to indicate that the causes which are favorable
to the growth of population tend to reduce crime, and vice versa, the
causes which retard the growth of population are productive of an
increase of crime.
IMMIGRATION AND CRIME
Let us next examine the effect of immigration upon criminality
in the state of New York. The census statistics of foreign-born do
not go farther back than 1850. In Table IV the percentage of
foreign-born at each census is collated with the ratio of the average
annual number of convictions for each decade ending on a census
year to the average population for the same decade ; the average
population is taken to be the arithmetical mean of the totals for
two successive censuses.
From 1850 to 1860 the foreign-born population of New York
increased relatively to the total population of the state, but the
annual average number of convictions during the decade 1851-
1860 fell below the average for 1841-1850. From 1870 to 1880
the number of foreign-born decreased relatively to the total
population ; at the same time the annual rate of convictions in-
creased as compared with the preceding decade. From 1880 to
1890 this movement was reversed : the foreign-born population
went up and the rate of criminality went down. Again from
1890 to 1900 the percentage of foreign-born slightly decreased,
and the rate of criminality showed a small increase. These
tendencies appear still more pronounced, if we compare the in-
crease of the number of convictions with the increase of the
foreign-born and the total population of the state for_the census
years 1850-1900, as shown in Table IV.
TABLE IV. NUMBER OF CONVICTIONS COMPARED WITH TOTAL AND
FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION, 1850-1900
NUMBER
FOREIGN-
TOTAL
PERCENTAGE OF INCREASE
CENSUS YEAR
OF CONVIC-
BORN
POPULATION
TIONS
THOUSAND
THOUSANDS
Convictions
Foreign
Birth
Total
Population
1850 ....
1,552
656
3,097
1860 ....
1, 60 1
,001
3,881
3-2
52.6
25-3
1870 ....
2,151
,138
4,383
34-4
13-7
12.9
1880 ....
2,847
,211
5,083
32.4
6.4
16.0
1890 ....
3,364
,571
5,998
18.1
29.7
18.0
1900 ....
4,116
,900
7,269
22.4
21.0
21.2
In 1860, when th,e rate of increase of the foreign-born population
was at its apex, the rate of criminality was at its bottom. Toward
1870 the rate of increase of the foreign-born dropped, but the
314 EFFECTS
rate of increase of the number of convictions made a big jump.
From 1880 to 1890 the rate of increase of the foreign-born went
up, at the same time the rate of increase of the number of con-
victions went down. From 1890 to 1900 the two movements were
reversed. In short, an increase of the percentage of the foreign-born
population is accompanied by a decrease of criminality, and vice versa.
This fact shows that the same conditions which attract the
immigrant to the United States tend to reduce the rate of crim-
inality.
Turning to the statistics of crime among native and foreign-
born, we find them summed up in the following statement of the
census report on "Prisoners." "From these figures [i.e., from
I the number of commitments], as well as from those for prisoners
! enumerated on June 30, 1904, it is evident that the popular
belief that the foreign born are filling the prisons has little founda-
tion in fact."
A comparison of the figures for 1904 with those for 1890 shows
j that the ratio of foreign-born among the white prisoners fell
I from 28.3 to 23.7 per cent, while the percentage of native prisoners
increased from 71.8 to 76.3 per cent (op. cit., p. 18).
Is there any evidence of a change in this respect since 1904?
This question can best be answered by an examination into the
nativity of the persons convicted in 1908 in the courts of record
of the state of New York. The year 1908, as stated, showed a
marked increase of crime, and of all states the state of New York
is alleged to be the greatest sufferer from the influx of foreign
criminals.
The nativity of the persons convicted in courts of record in
1908 was as follows :
Natives of the United States 4,392
Foreign-born 2,687
Nativity unknown 272
Total for the state 7,351
To compare these figures with the distribution of the population
of the state by nativity, it must be noted that of the total number
of prisoners only 38 were under fifteen years of age and only 361,
or 5 per cent, were women. In the foreign-born population,
however, the percentages of children under 15 and of women, who
IMMIGRATION AND CRIME 315
contribute very few criminals, are lower than among the native,
while the percentage of males fifteen years of age and over who
contribute the bulk of criminals is higher in the foreign-born
than in the native population. A fair comparison should con-
sider only the ratio of male offenders fifteen years of age and over
to the total male population of the same age groups.1
Inasmuch as the statistics of the secretary of state of New York
contain no classification of the native and foreign-born offenders
by age and sex, estimates have to be resorted to. The number of
offenders under fifteen years being very small, we may assume that
they were all native boys and deduct their number from that of
native offenders ; we shall thereby reduce the rate of native crimi-
nality and increase relatively the percentage of foreign criminals.
The number of foreign-born male offenders would be further
increased, if we were to follow the same method with regard to
female offenders and charge all women convicted in courts, of
record to the group of native offenders. There is no reason, how-
ever, to assume that the native women numerically predominate
among female offenders. We may accordingly assume that the
percentage of foreign-born among female offenders is the same as
among male offenders.
1 "If the general population of all ages be taken, the basis for the comparison will
not be equitable for several reasons. Inmates of the general prisons are all at least
ten years of age and nearly all over fifteen. For the most part the immigrants
are between fifteen and forty years of age. The number of children under ten
years of age is extremely small among the white immigrants as compared with the
native whites. In view of these facts a comparison of the proportions of each
nativity class in the white prison population with the corresponding proportions of
the general population of all ages would clearly be unfair, for the inclusion of chil-
dren under ten years of age would so increase the proportion of native in the
general population that it would seem as if crime were more prevalent among the
foreign-born as compared with the native white than is actually the case. . . .
Of the whites at least ten years of age in the general population of the United
States in 1900, 19.5 per cent were foreign-born, while of the white prisoners of
known nativity enumerated on June 30, 1904, 23.7 per cent were foreign-born. The
foreign-born element therefore appears to be more prominent in the white population
of prisons than in the general white population. In some respects, however, a
comparison with the total white population ten years of age and over is hardly
fair to the foreign-born. Very few prisoners are under the age of fifteen, and the
great majority of prisoners, 94.5 per cent of the total number, are males. There-
fore it is perhaps more significant when the percentage of foreign-born among white
prisoners is compared with the percentage of foreign-born in the white population
fifteen years of age and over, classified by sex." — " Prisoners and Juvenile Delin-
quents" (Census report), pp. 18-19.
EFFECTS
It is probable that of the 272 convicted persons whose nativity
was unknown very few were foreigners, as their speech and
appearance did not mark them as such. By leaving this group
out of consideration, we again reduce the number of native
offenders relatively to the foreign-born. On the other hand, the
census figures giving the distribution of the population by nativity
relate to the year 1900, whereas the phenomenal immigration of
recent years must have increased the percentage of foreign-born
in the population of the state of New York. In every respect,
therefore, our statistics must be unfavorable to the foreign-born.
Let us now compare the percentages of native and foreign-born
among all offenders fifteen years of age and over, whose nativ-
ity is known, and among the male population of the state in the
same age groups.
TABLE V. NATIVE AND FOREIGN-BORN OFFENDERS FIFTEEN YEARS OF
AGE AND OVER, COMPARED WITH THE NATIVE AND FOREIGN-BORN
MALE POPULATION OF THE SAME AGES, STATE OF NEW YORK
NATIVITY
CONVICTIONS IN COURTS OF
RECORD
MALE POPULATION, 1900
Number
Percentage
Thousands
Percentage
Native
4,354
2,687
6l.8
38.2
1,648
907
64-5
35-5
Foreign-born ....
Total
7,041
IOO.O
2,555
IOO.O
Thus, with every allowance in favor of the native and against the
foreign-born, the ratio of foreign-born criminals is only 2.7 per
cent in excess of the ratio of foreign-born males to the total
male population of the state. The preceding table does not
include the more numerous class of minor offenders convicted at
Special Sessions. In Table VI the convictions in the minor
courts in 1908 are classified by character of offense separately
for the counties of New York and Kings, comprising the three
most densely settled boroughs of Manhattan, Bronx, and Brook-
lyn, and for the rest of the state. The population of these three
boroughs in 1900 contained 1,207,000, i.e. nearly two thirds of
the 1,900,000 foreign-born of the state of New York. The per-
centage of foreign-born in these three boroughs was 37.5, while
IMMIGRATION AND CRIME
317
in the rest of the state of New York it was only 17.1 per cent.
In 1908 the percentage of foreign-born in New York City was
in all probability considerably higher than in 1900. If the foreign-
born furnished a higher percentage of criminals than the native,
this tendency should loom up conspicuous in the comparison
between greater New York and the rest of the state. What are
the facts ?
TABLE VI. NUMBER AND PERCENTAGE OF CONVICTIONS IN SPECIAL
SESSIONS, CLASSIFIED BY CHARACTER OF OFFENSE; FOR THE THREE PRIN-
CIPAL BOROUGHS OF NEW YORK CITY AND THE REST OF THE STATE, 1908
CHARACTER OF OFFENSE
NUMBER
(In thousands)
PERCENTAGE
Total State
of
New York
New York
and Kings
Other
Counties
New York
and Kings
Other
C ounties
Petit larceny
Assault, third degree . .
All other offenses ....
Population, 1905 ....
6,464
2,788
48,543
2,988
779
8,706
3^76
2,009
39,837
46.2
28.0
17.7
53-8
72.0
82.3
8,067
3,743
4,326
46.4
53-6
The three principal boroughs of New York City in 1905 contained
nearly one half of the population of the state, yet they furnished
only 28 per cent of all convictions for assault and 17.7 per cent
of the most numerous class of minor offenses ; petty larceny
was the only offense whose frequency was proportionate to the
population of the great city. Thus, though the three boroughs
had twice as many foreign-born in proportion to their population
as the rest of the state, New York City had relatively no more
pickpockets than the rest of the state, and the number of all
other minor offenders was in proportion much smaller in the
three boroughs than up state. And that in a year which broke
the record of crime.
The popular opinion that the immigrants furnish a high per-
centage of criminals rests upon the belief that this country is
used as a hiding place by fugitive criminals from all quarters of
the world. There are no statistics relative to the criminal records
of the immigrants previous to their admission to this country.
But the statistics of crime in the state of New York, which is
3i8 EFFECTS
said to hold more than its proportionate share of the lawless
immigrants, warrant only one of the following two conclusions :
Either the new environment enables this invading army of
immigrants with criminal records to keep within the law ; or else
the criminal classes of Europe, contrary to the popular belief,
furnish less than their proportionate quota of immigrants —
which is quite plausible, since the criminals belong to the sub-
merged portion of the population and are kept at home by want
of funds with which to pay for their passage.
THE POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF IMMIGRATION l
EDWARD ALSWORTH Ross, PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY
OF WISCONSIN
ON a single Chicago hoarding, before the spring election of
1912, the writer saw the political placards of candidates
with the following names : Kelly, Cassidy, Slattery, Alschuler,
Pfaelzer, Bartzen, Umbach, Andersen, Romano, Knitckoff,
Deneen, Hogue, Burres, Short. The humor of calling " Anglo-
Saxon" the kind of government these gentlemen will give is.
obvious. At that time, of the eighteen principal personages /
in the city government of Chicago, fourteen had Irish names,
and three had German names. Of the eleven principal officials
in the city government of Boston, nine had Irish names, and of
the forty-nine members of the Lower House from the city of
Boston, forty were obviously of Hibernian extraction. In San
Francisco, the mayor, all the heads of the municipal depart-
ments, and ten out of eighteen members on the board of super-
visors, bore names reminiscent of the Green Isle. As far back as
1871, of 112 chiefs of police from twenty-two States who attended
the national police convention, seventy-seven bore Irish names,
and eleven had German names. In 1881, of the chiefs of police
in forty-eight cities, thirty-three were clearly Irish, and five were
clearly German.
In 1908, on the occasion of a " home-coming " celebration in
Boston, a newspaper told how the returning sons of Boston were
"greeted by Mayor Fitzgerald and the following members
of Congress : O'Connell, Keliher, Sullivan, and McNary -
following in the footsteps of Webster, Sumner, Adams, and
Hoar. They were told of the great work as Mayor of the late
beloved Patrick Collins. At the City Hall they found the sons
of Irish exiles and immigrants administering the affairs of the
1 From The Century Magazine, January, 1914.
320 EFFECTS
metropolis of New England. Besides the Mayor, they were
greeted by John J. Murphy, Chairman of the board of assessors,
Commissioner of Streets Doyle, and Commissioner of Baths
O'Brien. Mr. Coakley is the head of the Park Department, and
Dr. Durgin directs the Health Department ; the Chief of the Fire
Department is John A. Mullen, head of the Municipal Printing
Plant is Mr. Whelan, Superintendent of the Street Cleaning
is Cummings ; Superintendent of Sewers is Leahy ; Superintend-
ent of Buildings is Nolan; City Treasurer, Slattery; Police
Commissioner, O'Meara."
LThe Irish domination of our Northern cities is the broadest
ark immigration has left on American politics ; the immigrants
from Ireland, for the most part excessively poor, never got their
feet upon the land as did the Germans and the Scandinavians,
but remained huddled in cities. United by strong race feelings,
they held together as voters, and, although never a clear majority,
were able in time to capture control of most of the greater mu-
nicipalities. Now, for all their fine Celtic traits, these Irish im-
migrants had neither the temperament nor the training to make
\ a success of popular government. They were totally without
experience of the kind Americans had acquired in the working
of democratic institutions. The ordinary American by this
time had become tinctured with the spirit of legalism. Many
voters were able to look beyond the persons involved in a political
contest and recognize the principles at stake. Such popular
maxims as : "No man should be a judge in his own case," "The
ballot a responsibility," "Patriotism above party," "Measures,
not men," "A public office is a public trust," fostered self-restraint
and helped the voters to take an impersonal, long-range view
of political contests.
Warm-hearted, sociable, clannish, and untrained, the natural-
ized Irish failed to respect the first principles of civics. "What
is the Constitution between friends?" expresses their point of
view. In their eyes, an election is not the decision of a great,
impartial jury, but a struggle between the "ins" and the "outs."
Those who vote the same way are "friends." To scratch or to
bolt is to "go back on your friends." Places and contracts are
"spoils." The official's first duty is to find berths for his sup-
porters. Not fitness, but party work, is one's title to a place on
POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF IMMIGRATION 321
the municipal pay roll. The city employee is to serve his party
rather than the public that pays his salary. Even the justice of
courts is to become a matter of "pull" and "stand in," rather
than of inflexible rules.
A genial young Harvard man who has made the Good Govern-
ment movement a power in a certain New England city said
to me : "The Germans want to know which candidate is better
qualified for the office. Among the Irish I have never heard
such a consideration mentioned. They ask, 'Who wants this
candidate?' 'Who is behind him?' I have lined up a good
many Irish in support of Good Government men, but never by
setting forth the merits of a matter or a candidate. I approach
my Irish friends with the personal appeal, 'Do this for me!'
Nearly all the Irish who support our cause do it on a personal
loyalty basis. The best of the Irish in this city have often done
as much harm to the cause of Good Government as the worst.
Mayor C., a high-minded Irishman desiring to do the best he
could for the city, gave us as bad a government as Mayor F.,
who thought of nothing but feathering his own nest. Mayor C.
'stood by his f fiends. ";
The Hibernian domination has given our cities genial officials,
brave policemen, and gallant fire-fighters. It has also given J
them the name of being the worst-governed cities in the civilized '
world. The mismanagement and corruption of the great cities
of America have become a planetary scandal, and have dealt
the principle of manhood suffrage the worst blow it has received
in the last half century. Since the close of the Civil War, hun-
dreds of thousands of city dwellers have languished miserably
or perished prematurely from the bad water, bad housing, poor
sanitation, and rampant vice in American municipalities run
on the principles of the Celtic clan.
On the other hand, it is likely that our British, Teutonic,
Scandinavian, and Jewish naturalized citizens — still more our
English-Canadian voters — have benefited American politics.
In politics men are swayed by passion, prejudice, or reason.
By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the average Ameri-
can had come to be on his guard against passion in politics, but
not yet had he reached the plane of reason. This left him the
prey of prejudice. Men inherited their politics, and bragged of
322 EFFECTS
having always " voted straight." They voted Democratic for
Jefferson's sake, or Republican from love of Lincoln. The citi-
zens followed ruts, while the selfish interests "followed the ball."
Now, the intelligent naturalized foreigner, having inherited none
of our prejudices, would not respond to ancient cries or wartime
issues. He inquired pointedly what each party proposed to do
now. The abandonment of " waving the bloody shirt" and the
sudden appearance of the politics of actuality in the North, in
the eighties, came about through the naturalization of Karl and
Ole. The South has few foreign-born voters, and the South is
precisely that part of the country in which the reign of prejudice
in politics has longest delayed the advent of efficient and progres-
sive government.
In 1910 there were certainly three million naturalized citizens
in the United States. In southern New England and New York
they constitute a quarter of all the white voters. The same is
true of Illinois and the Old Northwest. In Providence, Buffalo,
Newark, St. Paul, and Minneapolis, there are two foreign voters
to three native white voters. In Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland,
and Boston, the ratio is about one to two. In Paterson, Chicago,
and New York, the ratio is nearer three to five, and in Fall River
it is three to four. When the foreigners are intelligent and experi-
enced in the use of the "Ballot, their civic worth does not suffer
by comparison with that of the natives. Indianapolis and Kansas
City, in which the natives outnumber the naturalized ten to one,
do not overshadow in civic excellence the Twin Cities of Minne-
sota, with three natives to two naturalized. Cleveland, in which
the naturalized citizens constitute a third, is politically superior
to Cincinnati, in which they are less than a sixth. Chicago, with
thrice the proportion of naturalized citizens Philadelphia has,
was roused and struggling with the python of corruption while
yet the city by the Delaware slept.
The machine in power uses the foreigner to keep in power.
The Italian who opens an ice-cream parlor has to have a victual-
er's license, and he can keep this license only by delivering Italian
votes. The Polish saloon keeper loses his liquor license if he fails
to line up his fellow-countrymen for the local machine. The
politician who can get dispensations for the foreigners who want
their beer on a Sunday picnic is the man who attracts the foreign
POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF IMMIGRATION 323
vote. Thus, until they get their eyes open and see how they are
being used, the foreigners constitute an asset of the established
political machine, neutralizing the antimachine ballots of an
equal number of indignant American voters.
The saloon is often an independent sway of the foreign vote.
The saloon keeper is interested in fighting all legal regulation
of his own business, and of other businesses — gambling, dance
halls, and prostitution — which stimulate drinking. If "blue"
laws are on the statute book, these interests may combine to seat
in the mayor's chair a man pledged not to enforce them. Even
if the saloon keeper has no political ax of his own to grind,
his masters, the brewers, will insist that he get out the vote for
the benefit of themselves or their friends. Since liberal plying
with beer is a standard means of getting out the foreign vote, the
immigrant saloon keeper is obliged to become the debaucher
and betrayer of his fellow-countrymen. In Chicago the worthy
Germans and Bohemians are marshaled in the "United Societies,"
ostensibly social organizations along nationality lines, but really
the machinery through which the brewers and liquor dealers
may sway a foreign-born vote not only in defense of liquor, but
also in defense of other corrupt and affiliated interests.
The foreign press is another means of misleading the naturalized
voters. These newspapers, — Polish, Bohemian, Italian, Greek,
Yiddish, etc., — while they have no small influence with their
readers, are poorly supported, and often in financial straits.
Many of them, therefore, can be tempted to sell their political
influence to the highest bidder, which is, of course, the party
representing the special interests. Thus the innocent foreign-
born readers are led like sheep to the shambles, and Privilege
gains another intrenching-tool.
THE LOSS OF POLITICAL LIKE-MINDEDNESS
If the immigrant is neither debauched nor misled, but votes
his opinions, is he then an element of strength to us ?
When a people has reached such a degree of political like-
mindedness that fundamentals are taken for granted, it is free
to tackle new questions as they come up. But if it admits to
citizenship myriads of strangers who have not yet passed the
^
324 EFFECTS
civic kindergarten, questions that were supposed to be settled
are reopened. The citizens are made to thresh over again old
straw — the relation of church to state, of church to school,
of state to parent, of law to the liquor trade. Meanwhile, ripe
sheaves ready to yield the wheat of wisdom under the flails of
discussion lie untouched. Pressing questions — public hygiene,
conservation, the control of monopoly, the protection of labor
V — go to the foot of the docket, and public interests suffer.
Some are quite cheerful about the confusion, cross-purposes,
and delay that come with heterogeneity, because they think
the variety of views introduced by immigration is a fine thing,
"keeps us from getting into a rut." The plain truth is, that
rarely does an immigrant bring in his intellectual baggage any-
thing of use to us. The music of Mascagni and Debussy, the
plays of Ibsen and Maeterlinck, the poetry of Rostand and
Hauptmann, the fiction of Jokai and Sienkiewicz were not brought
to us by way of Ellis Island. What we want is not ideas merely,
but fruitful ideas, fructifying ideas. By debating the ideas of
Nietzsche, Ostwald, Bergson, MetchnikofT, or Ellen Key, Ameri-
can thought is stimulated. But should we gain from the intro-
duction of old Asiatic points of view, which would reopen such
questions as witchcraft, child-marriage, and suttee? The flash-
ings that arise from the presence among us of many voters with
medieval minds are sheer waste of energy. While we Americans
wrangle over the old issues of clericalism, separate schools, and
"personal liberty," the little homogeneous peoples are forging
ahead of us in rational politics and learning to look pityingly
upon us as a chaos rather than a people.
POLITICAL MYSTICISM VS. COMMON SENSE
If you should ask an Englishman whether the tone of political
life in his country would remain unaffected by the admission
to the electorate of a couple of million Cypriotes, Vlachs, and
Bessarabians after five years' residence, he would take you for
a madman. Suggest to the German that the plane of political
intelligence in reading and thinking Germany would not be low-
ered by the access to the ballot box of multitudes of Serbs,
Georgians, and Druses of Lebanon, and he will consign you to
POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF IMMIGRATION 325
bedlam. Assure the son of Norway that the vote of the Persian
or Yemenite, of sixty months' residence in Norway, will be as
often wise and right as his own, and he will be insulted. It is
only we Americans who assume that the voting of the Middle
Atlantic States, with their million naturalized citizens, or of the
East North Central States, with their million, is as sane, discrimi-
nating, and forward-looking as it would be without them.
The Italian historian and sociologist Ferrero, after reviewing
our immigration policy, concludes that the Americans, far from
being "practical," are really the mystics of the modern world.
He says :
t
To confer citizenship each year upon great numbers of men
born and educated in foreign countries — men who come with ideas
and sympathies totally out of spirit with the diverse conditions in
the new country ; to grant them political rights they do not want,
and of which they have never thought; to compel them to declare
allegiance to a political constitution which they often do not under-
stand ; to try to transform subjects of old European monarchies into '
free citizens of young American republics over night — is not all
this to do violence to common sense?
VI. IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION COMMISSION
THIS feature of the Immigration Commission's general report
is a brief review of the sentiment toward immigration as
expressed in legislation, or attempts at legislation, upon the
subject in Congress. For convenience, the review is divided into
four periods, namely : From colonial times to 183*5 > the "Native
American" and "Know-Nothing" period, 1835-1860; end of
state control, 1861-1882 ; period of national control, 1882 to
the present time.
During the period first mentioned immigration was taken as a
matter of course ; the only legislation enacted, and practically all
that was proposed, was the law of 1819 for the regulation of the
carriage of steerage passengers at sea, which law also for the first
time provided that statistics relative to immigration to the United
States be recorded.
THE NATIVE AMERICAN MOVEMENT
The second period, from 1835 to T86o, is sharply defined by the
so-called " Native American" and "Know-Nothing" movement,
which, as is well known, were largely based on opposition to the
immigration of Catholics. The hostility early took the form of a
political movement, and in 1835 there was a Nativist candidate
for Congress in New York City, and in the following year that
party nominated a candidate for mayor of the same city. In
Germantown, Pennsylvania, and in Washington, D. C., Nativist
societies were formed in 1837, while in Louisiana the movement
was organized in 1839 and a state convention was held two years
later. It was at this convention that the Native American party,
under the name of the American Republican party, was established.
In 1845 ^e Nativist movement claimed 48,000 members in
New York, 42,000 in Pennsylvania, 14,000 in Massachusetts,
and 6000 in other States, while in Congress it had six
326
FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION 327
Representatives from New York and two from Pennsylvania.
The first national convention of Native Americans was held in
Philadelphia in 1845, when 141 delegates were present and a
national platform was adopted. The chief demands of this con-
vention were a repeal of the naturalization laws and the ap-
pointment of native Americans only to office .
While these societies were stronger in local politics than in
national, and were organized chiefly to aid in controlling local
affairs, their few representatives in Congress attempted to make
Nativism a national question. As a result of their efforts, the
United States Senate in 1836 agreed to a resolution directing the
Secretary of State to collect certain information respecting the
immigration of foreign paupers and criminals. In the House of
Representatives on February 19, 1838, a resolution was agreed to
which provided that the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed
to consider the expediency of revising the naturalization laws so
as to require a longer term of residence in the United States, and
also provide greater security against frauds in the process of
obtaining naturalization. The committee was further instructed
to consider the propriety and expediency of providing by law
against the introduction into the United States of vagabonds and
paupers deported from foreign countries. This resolution was
referred to a select committee of seven members, and its report
was the first resulting from a congressional investigation of
any question bearing upon immigration. Four members of the
committee were from New York and Massachusetts, which were
then the chief centers of the antiforeign movement, and its
report recommended immediate legislative action, not only by
Congress, but also by many of the states, so that alleged evils
could be remedied and impending calamities averted. Two
southern members of the committee and the member from Ohio
did not concur in the report. It is interesting to note that a
recommendation to this committee by the Native American
Association of Washington urged that a system of consular
inspection be instituted, a plan that in recent years has been
repeatedly recommended to Congress. The plan was to make
the immigrant, upon receiving his passport from the consul, pay
a tax of $20. The committee, however, did not include this
provision in its recommendations to Congress.
328 IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
The bill presented on recommendation of the committee pro-
vided that any master taking on board his vessel with the inten-
tion of transporting to the United States any alien passenger
who was an idiot, lunatic, maniac, or one afflicted with any
incurable disease, or any one convicted of an infamous crime,
should be fined $1000, or be imprisoned not less than one year
nor more than three. It was further provided that the master
should forfeit #1000 for any alien brought in who had not the
ability to maintain himself. Congress did not even consider
this bill, and during the next ten years little attempt was made
to secure legislation against the foreigner.
In the message to Congress on June i, 1841, President Tyler
referred to immigration in part as follows :
We hold out to the people of other countries an invitation to come
and settle among us as members of our rapidly growing family ; and
for the blessings which we offer them, we require of them to look
upon our country as their country, and unite with us in the great task
of preserving our institutions and thereby perpetuating our liberties.
THE "KNOW-NOTHING" MOVEMENT
As a consequence of the sudden and great increase of immigra-
tion from Europe between 1848 and 1850, the old dread of the
foreigner was revived, and in the early fifties the native Americans
again became active. The new, like the earlier movement, was
closely associated with the anti-Catholic propaganda. The new
organization assumed the form of a secret society. It was
organized probably in 1850 in New York City, and in 1852 it
was increased in membership by drawing largely from the old
established Order of United Americans. Its meetings were
secret, its indorsements were never made openly, and even its
name and purpose were said to be known only to those who
reached the highest degree. Consequently the rank and file,
when questioned about their party, was obliged to answer, " I
f don't know" ; so they came to be called " Know-No things."
By 1854 much of the organization's secret character had been
discarded. Its name — Order of the Star Spangled Banner -
and its meeting places were known, and it openly indorsed can-
didates for office and put forth candidates of its own. It is
FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION 329
recorded that in 1855 in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, Connecticut, New York, California, and Kentucky the
governors and legislature were "Know-Nothings," while the
party had secured the choice of the land commissioner of Texas
and the legislature and comptroller of Maryland, and had almost
carried the States of Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Massachusetts,
Louisiana, and Texas.
Encouraged by its success in local affairs, the "Know-Nothing "
party in 1855 began to make plans for the presidential election.
In that year a national council was held at Philadelphia. A plat-
form was adopted which called for a change in the existing natural-
ization laws, the repeal by the legislatures of several States of
laws allowing foreigners not naturalized to vote, and also for a
repeal by Congress of all acts making grants of land to unnatural-
ized foreigners and allowing them to vote in the Territories.
In the following year a national convention of the party was
held in Philadelphia, and 27 States were represented by 227
delegates. Nearly all the delegates from New England, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Iowa withdrew from the convention
when a motion was made to nominate a candidate for President.
The withdrawing minority wanted an antislavery plank.
Those remaining nominated Millard Fillmore for President.
The principles of the platform adopted at this convention were
that Americans must rule America, and to this end native-born
citizens should be selected for all state, federal, and municipal
government employment in preference to all others. A change
in the laws of naturalization, making continued residence of
twenty-one years an indispensable requisite for citizenship, and
a law excluding all paupers or persons convicted of crime from
landing in the United States, were demanded.
Millard Fillmore was also nominated for the presidency by the
Whig party in a convention held the following September, but
the Whigs did not, however, adopt the platform of the "Know-
Nothings," and even referred to "the peculiar doctrines of the
party which has already selected Mr. Fillmore as a candidate."
At the November election in 1856 Mr. Fillmore received only
874,534 votes, carrying but one State, Maryland; and it is
impossible to say how many of these votes were due to the fact
that he was a candidate of the "Know-Nothing" party.
330 IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
"KNOW-NOTHINGS" IN CONGRESS
The " Know-No thing " strength in Congress was said to have
been greatest in the Thirty-fourth Congress, 1854 to 1856. They
had no openly avowed representatives in the Thirty-third Con-
gress, while in the Thirty-fourth they claimed 43 Representatives
and 5 Senators, aside from 70 Republicans who were said to be
members of "Know-Nothing" councils. In the Thirty-fifth
Congress the "Know-Nothings" claimed 5 Senators and 14
Representatives, and about the same number were in the Thirty-
sixth and Thirty-seventh; but in the Thirty-eighth Congress
the party was not represented in either branch.
Being in a minority in Congress, the "Know-Nothings" had
but little influence on national legislation, although they made
several attempts in this regard. In naturalization bills introduced
they proposed to lengthen the period of residence, usually demand-
ing that it be made twenty-one years, but their proposed laws
affecting immigration were, as a rule, only directed against the
immigration of foreign paupers and criminals.
LEGISLATION FAVORABLE TO FOREIGNERS
It has been said that the "Know-Nothings" disappeared with-
out having accomplished anything against immigration, adopted
citizens, or Catholics, but that, as a matter of fact, some national
legislation favorable to foreigners was passed during this period
of agitation. In 1847, and again in 1848, the passenger law of
1819 was amended in order to improve conditions in the steerage
of immigrant ships. The avowed purpose of these laws and
amendments was to protect immigrants from dangers incident
to the travel of that day, and the "Native Americans" and
" Know-No things " were opposed to these laws.
The act organizing the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas,
passed in 1854, was also favorable to foreigners, it being provided
that the right of suffrage in such Territories should be exercised
by those declaring their intentions to become citizens and taking
an oath to support the Constitution of the United States and the
provisions of the act. During the discussion of the homestead
act in 1854, which act, however, was not finally passed until 1862,
FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION 331
there was considerable reference to immigrants and to whether
they should be allowed to enjoy the advantages of the act. The
" Know-No things" proposed to strike out the section of the bill
permitting the granting of land to foreigners who had filed their
intentions of becoming citizens, but the attempt failed.
THE END OF STATE LEGISLATION
Although the National Government did not assume control of
immigration until 1882, Congress in 1864 passed a law to en-
courage immigration. This law, which was repealed in 1868,
represents the only attempt of the Government to promote
immigration by direct legislation, although the States have
frequently made such attempts. In his annual message to the
first session of the Thirty-seventh Congress President Lincoln
favored a scheme of the Territories for encouraging immigra-
tion, and in a subsequent message, December 8, 1863, he
strongly recommended national legislation of the same nature.
LAW TO ENCOURAGE IMMIGRATION
In the House of Representatives this part of President Lincoln's
message was referred to a select committee of five members, and
the following April this committee brought in a bill to jncourage
immigration. In recommending the passage of the bill the com-
mittee said that the vast number of laboring men, estimated at
one million and a quarter, who had left their peaceful pursuits
and gone forth in defense of the Government had created a
vacuum which was becoming seriously felt in every part of the
United States, and that never before in the history of the country
had there existed such a demand for labor. The conclusion was
that the demand for labor could be supplied only by immigration.
The bill, which became a law July 4, 1864, provided for the
appointment by the President of a Commissioner of Immigration,
to be under the direction of the Department of State, and that
all contracts that should be made in foreign countries by emi-
grants to the United States whereby emigrants pledged the wages
of their labor for a term not exceeding twelve months to repay
the expenses of emigration, should be held to be valid in law
and might be enforced in the courts of the United States or by
332 IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
the several States and Territories, and that no such contract
could in any way be considered as creating a condition of slavery
or servitude. An immigration office was to be established in New
York City, in charge of a superintendent of immigration, who was
charged with arranging for the transportation of immigrants to
their final destination and protecting them from imposition and
fraud.
Following the enactment of the law of 1864 several companies
were established to deal in immigrant contract labor, but they
were not satisfied with the law and wanted its scope enlarged.
In 1866 the House of Representatives passed a bill amending
the act of 1864, the principal provision of the bill being to in-
crease the number of commissioners of immigration, the additional
commissioners to be stationed in several cities along the Atlantic
coast. The Senate, however, did not agree to the amendment.
The law itself was even declared impolitic, if not unconstitutional,
and at one time was in danger of repeal. The operations of the
immigration office in New York were attacked, the charge being
made that the commissioner of immigration there had done little
but to cooperate with the American Emigrant Company to
render its work efficient and enable it, through the power of
the Central Government, to enforce the contracts which it made
in foreign countries for the importation of immigrant labor.
About this time one of the first official protests against using
the United States as a dumping ground for criminals by for-
eign governments was entered by Congress, the following joint
resolution being passed and approved by the President on
April 17, 1866 :
Whereas it appears from official correspondence that the authorities
of Baseland, a Canton of Switzerland, have recently undertaken to
pardon a person convicted of murder on the condition that he would
emigrate to the United States, and there is reason to believe that similar
pardons of persons convicted of infamous offenses have been granted
in other countries : Now, therefore,
Resolved by the Senate, etc., That the Congress of the United States
protests against such acts as unfriendly and inconsistent with the
comity of nations, and hereby requests the President of the United
States to cause a copy of this protest to be communicated to the repre-
sentatives of the United States in foreign countries, with instructions
FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION 333
to present to the governments where they are accredited, respectively,
and to insist that no such acts shall, under any circumstances, be
repeated.
In the Fortieth Congress two bills were introduced providing for
agencies for the promotion of immigration, to be located in Great
Britain, Germany, Sweden, and Norway. For these two bills the
House substituted one which provided that the work to be done
by these special agents be done instead by United States consuls.
No favorable action was taken, however, and the brief period of
national encouragement of immigration was over when, on March
4, 1868, the law of 1864 was repealed by a clause in the consular
and diplomatic act.
OPPOSITION TO CONTRACT LABOR
In the Forty-first Congress the campaign against contracting
for foreign labor first began, a bill being introduced which was the
exact opposite of the law of 1864. This bill, which was not acted
upon, provided that any contract made in foreign countries
whereby immigrants pledged service or labor to be performed
upon arrival in the United States should not be enforced in any
federal or state court.
Proceedings in Congress the next few years, while showing the
general sentiment against the importation of contract labor,
although in favor of the immigration of worthy foreigners, are
interesting chiefly as showing the circumstances which led to the
change of control of immigration from the various States to the
National Government.
On May 31, 1870, an act to enforce the rights of citizens to vote
in the several States and for other purposes was approved. This
act provided that no tax should be imposed or enforced by any
State upon any person immigrating thereto from a foreign country
which was not imposed upon every person immigrating to such
State from any other foreign country. This is interesting here
simply as showing that at this time Congress regarded the levying
of a head tax on foreign immigrants as a legitimate field for state
legislation.
In his annual message to Congress, December 4, 1871, President
Grant suggested congressional action for the protection of
334 IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
immigrants, saying that it seemed to him a fair subject of
legislation by Congress. Later, in the same session, he sent a
special message to Congress upon the subject of immigration in
which he urged national control, saying in part :
I do not advise national legislation in affairs that should be regulated
by the States ; but I see no subject more national in its character than
provision for the safety and welfare of the thousands who leave
foreign lands to become citizens of this Republic. When their resi-
dence is chosen they may then look to the laws of their locality for
protection and guidance.
i
At about this period several bills were introduced for the
promotion of immigration and the protection of immigrants, and
the Senate Committee on Commerce reported a bill which pro-
vided for the appointment of a Commissioner of Immigration;
the levying of a head tax of $i on each immigrant passenger
landed in lieu of a head tax imposed by States ; and the exclusion
of criminals. The bill in question did not pass, but in 1875 a
law was enacted which provided for the exclusion of prostitutes.
The law in which this provision was contained, however, was
designed chiefly to regulate Chinese immigration. The messages
of President Grant and the debates in Congress evidently indi-
cated a strong sentiment in favor of national control of immigra-
tion, and in 1876 a decision of the Supreme Court practically left
no alternative.
STATE CONTROL DECLARED UNCONSTITUTIONAL
Before the decision of 1876 above referred to various questions
relating to the subject of immigration had been considered by the
Supreme Court of the United States. The first of these cases was
that of the State of New York v. Miln. This case tested the
constitutionality of a law passed by the legislature of New York
State in 1824, requiring all masters of vessels arriving at the
port of New York to make a report in writing and give the name,
age, and the last legal residence of every person on board during
the voyage, and stating whether any of his passengers had gone
on board any other vessel or had been landed at any place with a
view to proceeding to New York. Another section of the law
FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION 335
made it lawful for the mayor of the city to require a bond from
every master of a vessel to indemnify the mayor and the overseer
of the poor from any expense incurred for passengers brought
in and not reported. The United States Supreme Court held
that the New York act was not a regulation of commerce, but of
police ; and, being so, it was in exercise of a power which right-
fully belonged to the State.
Justice Story dissented from the decision of the court, declared
the law unconstitutional, and said, in part :
The result of the whole reasoning is that whatever restrains or pre-
vents the introduction or importation of passengers or goods into the
country authorized or allowed by Congress, whether in the shape of
a tax or other charge, or whether before or after their arrival in port,
interferes with the exclusive right to regulate commerce.
This law being held to be constitutional, New York, in 1829, in
providing for the support of the marine and quarantine hospital
established on Staten Island, ordered that the health com-
missioner should collect from the master of every vessel arriving
from a foreign port $1.50 for every cabin passenger ; $i for every
steerage passenger, mate, sailor, or marine; and 25 cents for
every person arriving on coasting vessels. .The money so col-
lected, after deducting 2 per cent, was all to be used for the benefit
of the above-named hospital.
In 1837 Massachusetts enacted a law which provided for an
inspection of arriving alien passengers and required a bond from
the owner of the vessel bringing such aliens as security that such
of these passengers, incompetent in the eyes of the inspectors to
earn a living, should not become a public charge within ten
years. It also provided that $2 be paid for each passenger
landed, the money so collected to be used for the support of for-
eign paupers.
In 1849 these two legislative acts were declared unconstitutional
by the Supreme Court, in what are known as the "Passenger
Cases."
Immediately after the decision of the Supreme Court the New
York statute was modified with a view to avoiding the constitu-
tional objection. As modified the law provided that the master
or owner of every vessel landing passengers from a foreign port
336 IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
was bound to make a report similar to the one recited in the
statute declared to be valid in the case of New York v. Miln,
in which report the mayor was to indorse a demand upon the
owner or master that he give a bond for every passenger landed
in the city to indemnify the commissioners of immigration, and
every county, city, and town in the State against any expense
for the relief or support of the person named in the bond for
four years thereafter; but the owner could commute for such
bond and be released from giving it by paying $1.50 for each
passenger landed.
In several other States similar laws were in force. Cases were
brought up to the Supreme Court from New York, California,
and Louisiana, and the laws were declared unconstitutional.
Mr. Justice Miller, who delivered the opinion, said in part :
It is a law in its purpose and effect imposing a tax on the owner of
the vessel for the privilege of landing in New York from foreign coun-
tries. ... A law or rule emanating from any lawful authority which
prescribes terms or conditions on which alone the vessel can discharge
its passengers is a regulation of commerce ; and in the case of vessels
and passengers coming from foreign ports is a regulation of foreign
commerce.
The most interesting part of this decision, however, was that
in which the court recommended that Congress exercise full
authority over immigration, saying :
We are of the opinion that this whole subject has been confided to
Congress by the Constitution ; that Congress can more appropriately
and with more acceptance exercise it than any other body known to
our law, state or national ; that by providing a system of laws in these
matters applicable to all ports and to all vessels, a serious question
which has long been a matter of contest and complaint may be effec-
tively and satisfactorily settled.
THE MOVEMENT FOR NATIONAL CONTROL
By the above decision the States were left without the means,
except by taxing their own citizens, of providing suitable in-
spection of immigrants or of caring for the destitute among those
admitted. The only alternative was the recommendation of the
Supreme Court that Congress assume control of immigration
FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION 337
legislation, and New York representatives in Congress imme-
diately endeavored to secure the passage of a general immigra-
tion law. The above-quoted case was decided by the Supreme
Court March 20, 1876, and on July 6 following Senator Conkling
and Representative Cox, of New York, introduced bills for the
national regulation of immigration.
These bills provided for a manifest of all alien passengers ; a
head tax of $2 ; the exclusion and deportation of convicts, insane
persons, and paupers, and the reimbursement to the States of
all money paid out by them for the support and maintenance of
any immigrants within four years after their arrival. These bills
were not given favorable consideration, the principal opposition
coming from the commercial organizations of the country. New
York Senators and Representatives, however, continued to intro-
duce bills of like nature, but a national immigration law was not
enacted until 1882.
THE IMMIGRATION LAW OF 1882
In his message of December 6, 1881, President Arthur called
attention to the subject of immigration control and recommended
legislation regarding the supervision and transitory care of the
immigrants at ports of debarkation.
In that session of Congress immigration legislation was given
consideration, and on August 3, 1882, the first general immigra-
tion law was approved. This law provided that a head tax of 50
cents should be levied on all aliens landed at United States
ports, the money thus collected to be used to defray the expenses
of regulating immigration and for the care of immigrants after
landing, no more being expended at any port than was collected
at such port. The Secretary of the Treasury was charged with
executing the provisions of the act, and for that purpose he was
given power to enter into contracts with such state officers as
might be designated by the governor of any State to take charge
of the local affairs of immigration within such State. The
law provided that foreign convicts (except those convicted of
political offenses), lunatics, idiots, and persons likely to become
public charges, should not be permitted to land.
338 IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
THE FIRST CONTRACT-LABOR LAW
On February 26, 1885, the first law forbidding the importation
of contract labor was approved. This law was defective, in that
no inspection was provided for, nor was any arrangement made
for the general execution of the provisions of the law or for the
deportation of the contract laborer himself. This law was
amended by the act of February 23, 1887, and by this amend-
ment the Secretary of the Treasury was given the same power to
exclude and deport contract laborers that he had been given
under the act of 1882 over criminals, paupers, idiots, and lunatics.
The act of 1885 was again amended on October 9, 1888, by which
amendment the Secretary of the Treasury was given power to
return within the year any immigrant landed contrary to this
law.
From 1882 to 1888, aside from the enactment of the contract-
labor laws referred to, there was little attempt at other immigra-
tion legislation. Numerous bills in amendment of the laws of 1882
were introduced in Congress, but no action was taken upon them.
INVESTIGATIONS OF THE FORD COMMITTEE
During this period, however, there was considerable agitation
for the further restriction or regulation of immigration, and in
1888 the House of Representatives passed a resolution, in which
note was taken of the charges of prominent journals that the
laws prohibiting the importation of contract laborers, convicts,
and paupers were being extensively evaded, owing to the lack of
machinery to enforce them, and this resolution authorized the
appointment of a select committee to investigate the matter.
This select committee, which was known as the "Ford com-
mittee," reported at the following session of Congress. The report
alleged that each year there were thousands of alien paupers,
insane persons, and idiots landed in this country who became a
burden upon the States where they happened to gain a settle-
ment; that many of these were assisted to emigrate oy the
officials of the country from which they came ; that the number of
persons not lawfully entitled to land in the United States who
came in by the way of the Canadian frontier was large, and was
FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION 339
becoming a serious danger, the testimony showing that in many
instances immigrants coming by steamer to Quebec had within
forty-eight hours after their arrival there been applicants for
shelter in the almshouses of the State of New York. This was
probably the first time that serious attention was called to the
matter of overland immigration. The committee also declared
that the law of 1882, as regards the excluding of convicts, had
been and was being repeatedly violated to such an extent that it
demanded remedial legislation, and that the contract-labor law
was easy to violate and convictions under it hard to secure. To
remedy these defects the committee recommended that the
enforcement of all acts relating to the regulation of immigration
be intrusted solely to the Federal Government rather than to
state authorities, as was provided under the law of 1882. The
committee praised the immigrant of the past, but said that it
could not praise the immigrant then coming. The idea of selection
was emphasized, and it was asserted that "the time had come to
draw the line and to select the good from the bad, because the
country could not properly assimilate them."
Besides excluding idiots, paupers, lunatics, and convicts, the
bill proposed by the Ford committee added to the excluded classes
polygamists, anarchists, and persons afflicted with a loathsome
or dangerous contagious disease. The provisions of the contract-
labor law were also incorporated in the bill, and it was provided
that any person found in the United States having come contrary
to law should be deported within two years at the expense of the
transportation company bringing him. All aliens were also
required to bring a consular certificate of emigration, showing
that they were not among the classes excluded by the United
States law. Congress, however, did not act upon the recommen-
dations of the Ford committee.
IMMIGRATION COMMITTEES ESTABLISHED
The subject of immigration continued to be a matter of interest,
and in 1889 a standing Committee on Immigration in the Senate
and a Select Committee on Immigration and Naturalization in
the House were established. In 1890 these committees were
authorized jointly to make an inquiry relative to immigration and
340 IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
to investigate the workings of the various laws of the United
States and of the several States relative to immigration.
Various reports were submitted, and the conclusion of the com-
mittee was that a radical change in the immigration laws was not
advisable, although it had been found that throughout the
country there existed a demand for a stricter enforcement of the
immigration laws. During 1890 one or more political parties in
23 States had demanded additional regulations of immigration.
The investigation of the joint committee showed that large
numbers of immigrants were being landed every year in
violation of the law of 1882, the chief cause of which was the
divided authority provided for the execution of the immigration
act. The contract-labor law was found to be generally evaded.
The bill presented by the committee aimed to correct faults in
existing law. As it was presented it received rather general
favor, the only opposition to it being on the part of ultra-
restrictionists, who tried to have substituted a bill which raised
the head tax from 50 cents to $>i and provided for a thorough
consular examination. The substitute bill was defeated by a
vote of 207 to 41. The bill of the committee passed the House
by a vote of 125 to 48, and after being adopted by the Senate
without discussion it was approved on March 3, 1891.
THE IMMIGRATION LAW OF 1891
This law provided for a head tax of 50 cents, as was also pro-
vided in the law of 1882, the head tax being considered merely as
a means of raising money for the proper administration of the
law. Persons suffering from a loathsome or a dangerous conta-
gious disease, and polygamists, were added to the classes excluded
by the act of 1882, and it was also provided that "assisted persons,
unless affirmatively shown that they did not belong to any
excluded class," should be debarred. The contract-labor law
was strengthened by prohibiting the encouragement of immigra-
tion by promises of employment through advertisements pub-
lished in any foreign country, and transportation companies
were forbidden to solicit or encourage immigration. Under the
law of 1891 the office of the superintendent of immigration was
authorized, and for the first time federal control of immigration
FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION 341
was completely and definitely established, United States officials ,
exercising the functions which under the law of 1882 had been
delegated to the States. It now became the duty of the command-
ing officer of every vessel bringing alien immigrants to report
to the proper inspection officials the name, nationality, last
residence, and destination of all such aliens ; all decisions of the
inspection officials refusing any alien the right to land were final
unless appeal was taken to the Secretary of the Treasury ; the
medical examination of immigrants at United States ports was
to be made by surgeons of the United States Marine-Hospital
Service and for the first time an inspection of immigrants on the
borders of Canada and Mexico was provided for. Another
provision not found in the law of 1882 was that which allowed
the return within a year after arrival of any alien who had come
into the United States in violation of law, such return being at
the expense of the transportation company or person bringing
such alien into the country.
THE INVESTIGATIONS OF 1892
Notwithstanding the new law, however, the question of
immigration continued to receive attention in Congress. This
law was approved on March 3, 1891, and on January 29, 1892, a
joint committee was charged with investigating the workings of
the various laws of the United States relative to immigration
and the importation of contract laborers. This committee made a
report on July 28 of the same year. The committee found that
many undesirable immigrants were being permitted to land who
under a proper and reasonable construction of the law should
have been refused admission, and that the law permitting the
commissioner of immigration at any port to be the sole arbiter as
to whether an immigrant should land or not, with an appeal in
favor of the immigrant in case he is not permitted to land, and
no appeal in case he is unlawfully permitted to do so, should be
changed. In recommending a more careful inspection of immi-
grants the committee said that what theretofore had been called
examinations appeared to be more of a farce than a reality. To
remedy this it was proposed that whenever an inspector was in
doubt regarding the right of an immigrant to land he might detain
342 . IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
him for a special inquiry conducted by four inspectors, the favor-
able decision of three of them being necessary to admit. Finally
the committee decided that an examination should be made at
foreign ports of embarkation by the captain and surgeon of the
ship bringing him, thus making the steamship and transportation
lines responsible for the character of the persons they bring.
Bills embodying the recommendations' of the committee were
introduced and passed by the Senate without debate, but the
House took no action at that session.
On July 1 6, 1892, the Senate passed a resolution providing that
the Committee on Immigration be empowered to investigate
the workings of the immigration laws and the importation of
contract labor, as well as the laws of the prevailing methods of
naturalization.
The result of this investigation was reported to the next session
of Congress. Accompanying the report were two bills, one
establishing additional regulations concerning immigration and
the other entirely prohibiting immigration for one year. The
reason for the latter bill was the epidemic of cholera then pre-
vailing in Europe. The bill declaring for the total suspension of
immigration for one year, simply to " defeat the arrival of cholera
within our borders," was deemed too severe, and instead the
following provision, which is still in force, was inserted in the
general quarantine act:
That whenever it shall be shown to the satisfaction of the President
that by reason of the existence of cholera or other infectious or con-
tagious disease in a foreign country there is a serious danger of the
introduction of the same into the United States and that notwith-
standing the quarantine defense this danger is so increased by the in-
troduction of persons or property from such country that a suspension
of the right to introduce the same is demanded in the interest of the
public health, the President shall have the power to prohibit, in whole
or in part, the introduction of persons and property from such coun-
tries or places as he shall designate and for such period of time as he
may deem necessary.
The other bill presented by the Senate committee is inter-
esting in that for the first time restriction of immigration by
means of an educational test was recommended by a congres-
sional committee.
FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION 343
When the committee's report was presented it was argued in
Congress that the law of 1891 had been in force only a brief
period and its operation as yet had been only of an experimental
character, and that instead of passing a new law it would be
better to bring about a proper enforcement of the spirit of the
existing law. The objection to the educational test was that the
demand of the country was not for skilled and educated labor,
but "for a class of brawn and muscle to assist in agriculture and
in the line of their work to aid in the development of the almost
boundless resources of the great West and South." It was
further argued that the country was not demanding the exclusion
of any immigrants but criminals and paupers. While there were
some who favored even a more radical restriction than was
proposed in the committee bill, the idea of promoting a better
enforcement of the existing laws prevailed, and while the_ com-
mit tee's recommendations resulted in a revised immigration law,
which was approved March 3, 1893, it was by no means radical.
One important provision of the law of 1893 was that boards of
special inquiry should pass upon the admissibility of immigrants,
a practice which has since prevailed.
With the exception of an amendment to an appropriation act
in 1894 raising the head tax on immigrants from 50 cents to $i,
no immigration legislation was enacted until 1903. The agitation
of the subject in Congress continued, however, and the period is
interesting chiefly because of the adoption by both houses of
Congress of a bill providing for an educational test for immigrants
and the veto of the bill by President Cleveland.
PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S VETO
As the bill went to the President it provided that persons
physically capable and over 16 years of age who could not read
and write the English language or some other language, parents,
grandparents, wives, and minor children of admissible immigrants
being excepted, were added to the excluded classes.
President Cleveland returned the bill with his veto on March 2,
1897. He objected to the radical departure from the previous
national policy relating to immigration, which welcomed all
who came, the success of which policy was attested by the last
344 IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
century's great growth. In referring to the claim that the quality
of recent immigration was undesirable, he said, "The time is
quite within recent memory when the same thing was said of
immigrants who, with their descendants, are now numbered
among our best citizens." The prevailing disturbed labor condi-
tions he attributed to a general business depression, which would
in no way be affected by restricting immigration. In referring to
"the best reason that could be given for this radical restriction
of immigration," the "protecting of our population against de-
generation and saving our national peace and quiet from im-
ported turbulence and disorder," President Cleveland said that
he did not think it would be protected against these evils by
limiting immigration to those who could read and write, for, in
his mind, it was safer "to admit a hundred thousand immi-
grants who, though unable to read and write, seek among
us only a home and opportunity to work, than to admit
one of those unruly agitators who can not only read and
write, but delights in arousing by inflammatory speech the
illiterate and peacefully inclined to discontent." Those classes
which we ought to exclude, he claimed, should be legislated
against directly.
, ' Sections of the bill declaring it a crime for an alien regularly to
come into the United States for the purpose of obtaining work
from private parties, President Cleveland declared, were "illib-
eral, narrow, and un-American," and, besides, he said, the resi-
dents of these border States and Territories "have separate and
especial interests which in many cases make an interchange of
labor between their people and their alien neighbors most
important, frequently with the advantage largely in favor of our
citizens."
On March 3, 1897, tne House passed the bill over the Presi-
dent's veto by a vote of 193 to 37, but no action was taken in the
Senate, and considering the close vote by which the conference
report was adopted by the Senate it is very doubtful whether it
could have been passed over the veto.
In the Fifty-fifth Congress the bill which President Cleveland
vetoed was again introduced and passed the Senate by a vote of
45 to 28, but the House of Representatives refused to consider it
by a vote of 103 to 101.
FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION 345
INVESTIGATIONS BY THE INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION
By an act of June 18, 1898, the Industrial Commission was
created. Section 2 of this act provided :
That it shall be the duty of this comnu'ssion to investigate ques-
tions pertaining to immigration, and to report to Congress and to
suggest such legislation as it may deem best upon these subjects.
The final report of this commission containing recommen-
dations relative to immigration legislation was submitted to
Congress on February 20, 1902, and shortly afterwards a bill was
introduced in the House which was substantially in accord with
the recommendations made. The principal object of the bill was
to codify in concise form all immigration legislation before
enacted, from the act of March 3, 1875, to the act of 1894, and
to arrange the legislation in regular order and sequence according
to the various specific subjects dealt with in the bill.
When the Industrial Commission bill was before the House, an *
amendment was added providing for the exclusion of all persons
over fifteen who were unable to read the English language or
some other language, excepting the wife, children under 18 years
of age, and parents and grandparents of admissible immigrants.
This amendment was adopted in the House by a vote of 86 to 7.
With the addition of the literacy test provision the bill passed
the House May 27, 1902, practically as introduced, but the Senate
did not act upon it until the following session. Besides eliminating
the educational test and raising the head tax from $i to $2,
the Senate added provisions making it unlawful for any person
to assist in the unlawful entry or naturalization of alien
anarchists. These amendments were accepted by the House.
Before the final passage of the bill a provision was added pro-
viding that no alien, even if belonging in the excluded classes,
should be deported if liable to execution for a religious offense
in the country from which he came, but this provision was
eliminated in conference. The bill was approved by the Presi-
dent March 3, 1903.
From the act of March 3, 1903, until the act of February 20,
1907, no laws of general importance affecting immigration were
enacted by Congress. On February 14, 1903, the Department
346 IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
of Commerce and Labor was established and the Commissioner-
General of Immigration was placed under the jurisdiction and
supervision of that department. By the law of June 29, 1906,
providing for a uniform rule for the naturalization of aliens, the
designation of the Bureau of Immigration was changed to the
Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization, and it was charged
with the administration of the new naturalization law.
The agitation of the immigration question was continued, how-
ever, and at each session of Congress several bills proposing
restrictions or a stricter supervision of immigration were intro-
duced. In the Fifty-eighth Congress a bill was introduced which
proposed to limit the number of aliens from any one nation
allowed to enter the United States in any one fiscal year to 80,000,
but no action was taken upon it.
THE IMMIGRATION LAW OF 1907
In the first session of the Fifty-ninth Congress, following the
popular demand for the further regulation of alien immigration,
several bills were introduced and bills were passed by both the
Senate and House, but were not finally enacted into law until the
second session of that Congress.^ A bill introduced by Senator
Dillingham, of Vermont, which provided for some important
administrative changes in the immigration act of 1903, was
reported from the Senate committee March 29, 1906. This bill,
as reported, proposed several changes in the law. The head tax
on immigrants was increased from $2 to $5 ; imbeciles, feeble-
minded persons, iirm.rmmpfl.nieH £hiTHren_jmjer iy years of age ,
is "who are found to be and are certified by the examin-
ing surgeon as being mentally or physically defective, such mental
or physical defect being of a nature which may affect the ability
of such aliens to earn a living," were added to the excluded
classes ; the provision of existing law excluding prostitutes was
amended to also exclude "women or girls coming into the United
States for the purpose of prostitution or for any other immoral
purpose"; steamship companies were required to furnish lists
of outgoing passengers; and the creation of a division of dis-
tribution in the Bureau of Immigration was authorized.
FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION 347
In the Senate the bill was amended by the insertion of a literacy
test which provided for the exclusion from the United States of —
all persons over sixteen years of age and physically capable of reading
who cannot read the English language or some other language ; but
an admissible immigrant or a person now in or hereafter admitted to
this country may bring in or send for his wife, his children under
eighteen years of age, and his parents or grandparents over fifty years
of age, if they are otherwise admissible, whether they are so able to
read or not.
The bill as amended passed the Senate May 23, 1906, and in
the House was referred to the Committee on Immigration and
Naturalization. This committee recommended the substitution
of a House bill which, however, did not differ materially from
that of the Senate. The head tax provision was the same and
the additions to the excluded classes practically so ; a literacy
test similar to that of the Senate was also included. The bill as
originally reported by the House committee also provided for
the exclusion of every adult male who had not $25 in his possession
and every female alien and every male alien under 16 years
not possessed of $15, provided that $50 in the possession of
the head of a family would be considered a sufficient amount for
all members of such family, except grown sons.
In a subsequent bill and report, presented June n, 1906, how-
ever, the money qualification feature was omitted. The reports
of the House committee were accompanied by a minority report,
signed by two members of the committee, Mr. Bennet and Mr.
Ruppert, both of New York, in which the increased head tax
and the educational test provisions were disagreed to. In the
House of Representatives the bill was amended by striking out
the increased head-tax provision and the provision for a literacy
test, by inserting a section creating the Immigration Commission,
and by adopting the so-called Littauer amendment, which ""
provided as follows :
That an immigrant who proves that he is seeking admission to this
country solely to avoid prosecution or punishment on religious or
political grounds, for an offense of a political character, or prosecution
involving danger of punishment, or danger to life or limb on account
of religious belief, shall not be deported because of want of means
or the probability of his being unable to earn a livelihood.
348 IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
In conference between the two Houses the Senate receded from
its provision relative to a literacy test ; the House receded from
the Littauer amendment; the head-tax provision was com-
promised by fixing the amount at $4, instead of $5 as provided
by the Senate and $2 as provided by the House; the House
amendment creating the Immigration Commission was agreed
to with an amendment, which provided that the Commission
should consist of three Senators, three Members of the House of
Representatives, and three persons to be appointed by the
President of the United States, instead of two Senators, three
Members of the House, and two citizen members, as was pro-
vided in the House amendment. The section creating the Com-
mission was further amended in conference by the addition of the
following provision:
. . . the President of the United States is also authorized, in the
name of the Government of the United States, to call, in his discre-
tion, an international conference, to assemble at such point as may be
agreed upon, or to send special commissioners to any foreign country
for the purpose of regulating by international agreement, subject
to the advice and consent of the Senate of the United States, the im-
migration of aliens to the United States ; of providing for the mental,
moral, and physical examination of such aliens by American consuls
or other officers of the United States Government at the ports of em-
barkation, or elsewhere ; of securing the assistance of foreign govern-
ments in their own territories to prevent the evasion of the laws of
the United States governing immigration to the United States ; of
entering into such international agreements as may be proper to
prevent the immigration of aliens who, under the laws of the United
States, are or may be excluded from entering the United States, and
of regulating any matters pertaining to such immigration.
The conferees also added a new section (sec. 42) to the bill
amending section i of the passenger act of 1882 relative to air
space allotted to steerage passengers, 'and amended section i of
the immigration bill under consideration by inserting the follow-
ing provision :
That whenever the President shall be satisfied that passports is-
sued by any foreign government to its citizens to go to any country
other than the United States or to any insular possession of the United
States or to the Canal Zone are being used for the purpose of enabling
FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION 349
the holders to come to the continental territory of the United States
to the detriment of labor conditions therein, the President may refuse
to permit such citizens of the country issuing such passports to enter
the continental territory of the United States from such other country
or from such insular possessions or from the Canal Zone.
Later this provision of law was utilized for the purpose of
excluding Japanese and Korean laborers from the United States.
This bill was approved February 20, 1907, and is the present law
upon the subject.
LEGISLATION FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF THE WHITE-SLAVE
TRAFFIC
By the act of March 26, 1910, sections 2 and 3 of the immigra-~
tion law of February 20, 1907, were amended to more effectively
prevent the importation of women and girls for immoral purposes
and their control by importers and others after admission to the
United States. These amendments followed recommendations
of the Immigration Commission contained in a report of the
Commission on the importation and harboring of women for
immoral purposes.
By the act of March 26 the following were added to the classes
excluded by section 2 of the immigration act : " Persons who are
supported by or receive in full or in part the proceeds of prosti-
tution." Under the terms of the act of 1907 "women or girls
coming into the United States for the purpose of prostitution
or for any other immoral purpose," and also "persons who
procure or attempt to bring in prostitutes or women or girls
for the purpose of prostitution or for any other immoral pur-
pose," were specifically excluded from the United States. Under
that law, however, there was no specific provision for the ex-
clusion of that particularly reprehensible class of persons referred
to in the act of March 26, 1910. By the amendment of section
3 of the law of 1907 additional means were provided for the
punishment and deportation of aliens who in any way profited
or derived benefit from the proceeds of prostitution.
The agitation of the white-slave traffic in Congress also resulted
in the enactment of a law prohibiting the transportation of
persons from one State to another for purposes of prostitution.
350 IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
CHINESE LEGISLATION
In the early fifties, when the Chinese first came to California
in any considerable numbers, it is said that the people of San
Francisco regarded "with admiration and pride" these "pic-
turesque and far- traveling immigrants." The movement devel-
oped rapidly and supplied cheap labor for the construction of
railways. It appears* that there was little objection to their
coming at that time, but later when they entered the mines and
became successful competitors of white men and women in other
lines of work, an opposition to their immigration arose which
has since continued. This opposition was soon expressed in state
laws for the suppression of such immigration. In 1853 a law
taxing all foreign miners was enacted in California, but in prac-
tice such tax was collected only from the Chinese. In 1855
California imposed a tax of $55 upon every Chinese immigrant,
and in 1858 a law was passed prohibiting all Chinese or Mongo-
lians from entering the State, unless driven on shore by weather
or some accident, in which case it was provided they should be
immediately sent out of the country. In 1862 another act was
passed providing for a head tax of $2.50 upon all arriving Mongo-
lians 1 8 years of age or over, unless they were engaged in the
production and manufacture of sugar, rice, coffee, or tea. These
different state laws were declared unconstitutional by the supreme
court of California. In the same manner the cities of the Pacific
coast passed ordinances directly or indirectly affecting the Chinese.
Notwithstanding adverse decisions of the state courts California
persisted in attempts to repress Chinese immigration, but finally
all such attempts were rendered futile by the decision of the United
States Supreme Court that the regulation of immigration was
a subject for national rather than state legislation.
Even before this decision, however, California appealed to
Congress for national legislation to stop Chinese immigration.
The first consideration given to Chinese immigration in Con-
gress resulted in the law of 1862 prohibiting the coolie trade,
which has been referred to as the first attempt of Congress to
regulate immigration. All debates in Congress and reports on
the subject, however, show that the question of the importation
of Chinese coolies into the United States was not considered,
FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION 351
the only purpose of the act being to prevent American vessels
from carrying on this coolie or slave trade, especially between
China and the West Indies, although to some extent it was also
carried on with South American ports.
THE BURLINGAME TREATY
Although political relations of the United States with China
date back to the year 1844, the first treaty in which emigration
from one country to the other was considered, was the Burlingame
treaty, proclaimed July 28, 1868. Sections 5 and 6 of that treaty
state the position of the United States respecting the rights of
Chinese in this country. The inherent and inalienable right of
man to change his home and allegiance, and also the mutual
advantage of the free migration and emigration of their citizens
and subjects, respectively, from the one country to the other, for
the purpose of curiosity, or trade, or as permanent residents, were
recognized, but "any other than an entirely voluntary emigra-
tion" was reprobated. By the Burlingame treaty the United
States declared that -
Chinese subjects visiting or residing in the United States shall enjoy
the same privileges, immunities, and exemptions in respect to travel
or residence as may there be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of
the most favored nations.
The right of naturalization was, however, denied them.
The attitude of the United States as expressed in this treaty was
not popular in the Pacific States, and these States continued their
efforts to secure legislation restricting the further immigration of
the Chinese.
In 1872 the legislature of California had instructed their
Representatives in Congress to urge the making of a new treaty
with China providing for the exclusion of certain Chinese
subjects, and the continued agitation finally resulted in the
enactment of the law of March 3, 1875. Besides prohibiting the
importation of women, especially Chinese women, for the purpose
of prostitution, and the immigration of convicts, the principal
provision of the act of 1875 was that the transporting into the
United States of any subject of China, Japan, or any oriental
352
IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
country, without their free and voluntary consent, for the pur-
pose of holding them to a term of service, was to be punished by
imprisonment for not more than one year and by a fine not
exceeding $2000. It further provided that any person attempting
to contract in this manner to supply coolie labor to another should
be guilty of a felony, and should be imprisoned for not more than
one year and pay a fine of not more than $5000.
CONGRESSIONAL INQUIRY OF 1876-1877
On February 27, 1877, the report of the joint special committee
sent to California to study the question was submitted to Con-
gress. The committee as appointed consisted of Messrs. Morton,
of Indiana, Meade, of New York, Wilson, of Massachusetts,
Cooper, of New York, and Sargent and Piper, of California. Be-
cause of sickness and resignations the final report was made
by Mr. Cooper, Mr. Sargent, and Mr. Piper. This report was a
violent denunciation of the Chinese as a class on the part of the
Pacific coast, and finally led to the passage of the Chinese-
exclusion law. Congress took no immediate action on this
report, but from that time on protests and bills looking to the
exclusion of Chinese were constantly being introduced and con-
sidered in Congress.
In 1879 a bill was introduced in Congress limiting to 15 the
number of Chinese who could come into the United States upon
any one vessel. It was argued against this bill that it would
abrogate the provisions of the Burlingame treaty. After being
amended by adding a provision for the abrogation of articles 5
and 6 of that treaty, which gave to the Chinaman all privileges
enjoyed by " citizens or subjects of the most favored nations,"
the bill passed the House January 28, 1879, by a vote of 155 to
72, and on February 15 it passed the Senate by a small majority.
On March i, 1879, President Hayes returned it with his veto,
declaring that history gave no other instance where a treaty had
been abrogated by Congress and that it was not competent to
modify a treaty by cutting out certain sections, and even if it
were constitutional, seeing that China would probably assent
willingly to such a modification, he thought it better policy to
wait for the proper course of diplomatic negotiations.
FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION 353
THE CHINESE TREATY OF isso
Congress failed to pass the bill over the veto, and negotiations
were almost immediately entered into for a change in the treaty.
On November 17, 1880, a treaty somewhat as desired by the
Pacific coast was concluded, the article relating to the limitation
and suspension of Chinese immigration into the United States
being as follows :
Whenever in the opinion of the Government of the United States
the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States, or their residence
therein, affects or threatens to affect the interests of that country,
or to endanger the good order of the said country, or of any locality
within the territory thereof, the Government of China agrees that the
Government of the United States may regulate, limit, or suspend
such coming or residence, but may not absolutely prohibit it. The
limitation or suspension shall be reasonable, and shall apply only to
Chinese who may go to the United States as laborers, other classes
not being included in the limitations. Legislation taken in regard to
Chinese laborers will be of such a character only as is necessary to
enforce the regulation, limitation, or suspension of immigration, and
immigrants shall not be subject to personal maltreatment or abuse.
THE CHINESE-EXCLUSION LAW OF 1882
After the entry of 1880 was concluded a bill to execute certain
stipulations contained therein was passed by the Senate and
House. As this bill went to the President for approval it provided
that within ninety days after its passage, and until twenty years
thereafter, the coming of Chinese laborers should be suspended.
Exception was made to Chinese laborers who were in the United
States on November 17, 1880, and those who should come before
the act went into effect. Also a complete system of registration,
certification and identification was provided. Skilled Chinese
laborers were specifically among those excluded, and all state or
United States courts were denied the right to admit Chinese to
citizenship. On April 4, 1882, President Arthur returned the bill
with his veto, his principal reason for refusing to sign it being that
the passage of an act prohibiting immigration for twenty years
was an unreasonable suspension of immigration and consequently
a breach of the treaty. The features relating to registration he
354 IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
also claimed served no good purpose. Subsequently a modified
bill was passed by Congress, and. although containing some of the
provisions objectionable to the President, he approved it on
May 6, 1882. This law provided that all immigration of Chinese
laborers, skilled or unskilled, should be suspended for a period of
ten years.
THE CHINESE-EXCLUSION LAW OF 1884
In the next Congress there were several bills introduced amend-
ing this act of 1882. One of these, that of Mr. Henley, of Cali-
fornia, was reported favorably by the Committee on Foreign
Affairs.
The law had been intended, by its originators, to exclude
Chinese laborers, but it had failed to do this and required revision
to conform to the intent of its framers. To substantiate this
view, the committee cited the case decided by Justices Lowell
and Nelson, of the United States circuit court in Massachusetts,
where a Chinese laborer, born on the island of Hongkong after its
cession to Great Britain, was held not to be within the provisions
of the act. To avoid a similar situation the act was extended to
all Chinese, subjects of whatever country. To prevent evasions
of the law through the " possible interpretations of words 'mer-
chants' and 'travelers,' together with the notorious capabilities
of the lower classes of Chinese for perjury," the certificates of the
exempt classes were made more elaborate, and the word "mer-
chant" was defined to exclude hucksters, peddlers, and fishermen.
The certificates were made the only evidence admissible to
establish a right to r center. These certificates also had to be
verified by the United States diplomatic officer at the port of
departure.
All attempts to make the bill less severe were futile, and it
passed the House by a vote of 184 to 12 ; not voting, 125. The
Senate passed it by a vote of 43 to 12 ; not voting, 21. It was
approved July 5, 1884.
THE CHINESE TREATY OF 1888
In 1886 China of her own accord proposed to